Mission of Gravity (9 page)
The creature stopped as the machine resumed its forward motion. Its head dropped down to a yard or so from the ground, and the long neck swung as far as possible first to one side and then the other, while the multiple eyes took in the situation from all possible angles. It paid no attention to the Bree; either it failed to notice the small movements,of the crew, or regarded the tank as a more pressing problem. As Lackland moved toward one flank, it slewed its gigantic body around to keep facing it squarely. For a moment the Earthman thought of driving it into a full hundred-and-eighty-degree turn, so that it would be facing directly away from the ship; then he remembered that this would put the Bree in his line of fire should he have to use the gun, and stopped the circling maneuver when the stranded sled was at the monster’s right. With that eye arrangement, it would be as likely to see the sailors moving behind it as in front, anyway, he reflected.
Once more he moved toward the animal. It had settled down, belly to the ground, when he stopped circling; now it rose once more to its many legs and drew its head back almost into its great trunk, in what was apparently a protective gesture. Lackland stopped once more, seized a camera, and took several photographs of the creature; then, since it seemed in no mood to press an attack, he simply looked it over for a minute or two.
Its body was a trifle larger than that of an Earthly elephant; on Earth, it might have weighed eight or ten tons. The weight was distributed about evenly among the ten pairs of legs, which were short and enormously thick. Lackland doubted that the creature could move much faster than it had already.
After a minute or two of waiting, the creature began to grow restless; its head protruded a little and began to swing back and forth as though looking for other enemies. Lackland, fearing that its attention would become focused on the now helpless Bree and her crew, moved the tank forward another couple of feet; his adversary promptly resumed its defensive attitude. This was repeated several times, at intervals which grew progressively shorter. The feinting lasted until the sun sank behind the hill to the west; as the sky grew dark Lackland, not knowing whether the beast would be willing or able to carry on a battle at night, modified the situation by turning on all the tank’s lights. This, at least, would presumably prevent the creature from seeing anything in the darkness beyond, even if it were willing to face what to it must be a new and strange situation.
Quite plainly, it did not like the lights. It blinked several ‘times as the main spotlight burned into its eyes, and Lackland could see the great pupils contract; then, with a wailing hiss that was picked up by the roof speaker and clearly transmitted to the man inside, it lumbered a few feet forward and struck.
Lackland had not realized that he was so close — or, more correctly, that the thing could reach so far. The neck, even longer than he had at first estimated, snapped to full length, carrying the massive head forward and a trifle to one side. As it reached full travel, the head tipped a trifle and came slashing sideways. One of the great tusks clanged resoundingly against the tank’s armor, and the main light went out in the same instant. Another, shriller hiss suggested to Lackland that the current feeding the light had grounded into the armor through some portion of the monster’s head; but he was not taking time out to analyze the possibility. He backed away hastily, cutting the cabin lights as he did so. He did not want one of those tusks striking a cabin port with the force it had just expended on the upper armor. Now only the running lights, mounted low in the front of the vehicle and set well into the armor, were illuminating the scene. The animal, encouraged by Lackland’s retreat, lurched forward again and struck at one of these. The Earthman did not dare extinguish it, since it would have left him effectively blind; but he sent a frantic call on the radio.
„Barl! Are you doing anything about your nets? If you’re not about ready for action, I’m going to have to use the gun on this thing, meat or no meat. You’ll have to stay away if I do; he’s so close that high explosive would endanger the tank, and I’ll have to use thermite.”
„The nets are not ready, but if you’ll lead him back a few more yards hell be downwind of the ship, and we can take care of him another way.”
„All right.” Lackland did not know what the other way could be, and was more than a little doubtful of its effectiveness, whatever it was; but as long as retreat would suit the captain he was prepared to co-operate. It did not for an instant occur to him that Barlennan’s weapon might endanger the tank; and, in all fairness, it probably did not occur to Barlennan either. The Earthman, by dint of repeated and hasty withdrawals, kept the tusks from his plating most of the time; the monster did not seem to have the intelligence to anticipate motion on his part. Two or three minutes of this dodging satisfied Barlennan.
He, too, had been busy in those minutes. On the leeward rafts, toward the dueling monster and machine, were four devices closely resembling bellows, with hoppers mounted above their nozzles. Two sailors were now at each bellows, and at their captain’s signal began pumping for all they were worth. At the same time a third operator manipulated — the hopper and sent a stream of fine dust flowing into the current from the nozzle. This was picked up by the wind and carried toward the combatants. The darkness made it difficult to estimate its progress; but Barlennan was a good judge of wind, and after a few moments of pumping suddenly snapped out another order.
The hopper crews promptly did something at the nozzle of the bellows each was tending; and as they did so, a roaring sheet of flame spread downwind from the Bree to envelop both of the fighters. The ship’s crew were already sheltered behind their tarpaulins, even the „gunners” being protected by flaps of fabric that formed part of their weapons; but the vegetation that sprouted through the snow was neither tall nor dense enough to shelter the fighters. Lackland, using words that he had never taught Barlennan, hurled the tank backward out of the flame cloud with a prayer for the quartz in his portholes. His adversary, though evidently as anxious to dodge, seemed to lack the necessary control. It lurched first one way, then the other, seeking escape. The flame died out in seconds, leaving a cloud of dense white smoke which gleamed in the tank’s running lights; but either the brief fire had been sufficient or the smoke was equally deadly, for the monster’s disorganization grew steadily worse. Its aimless steps grew shorter and feebler as the legs gradually lost the power to support its vast bulk, and presently it stumbled and rolled on-one side. The legs kicked frantically for a time, while the long neck alternately retracted and stretched to full length, lashing the fanged head frantically through the air and against the ground. By sunrise the only remaining motion, was an occasional — twitch of head or leg; within a minute or two thereafter all activity of the giant creature ceased. The crew of the Bree had already swarmed overboard and across the dark patch where the snow had boiled from the ground, bent on acquiring meat. The deadly white cloud was farther downwind now, and gradually settling. Lackland was surprised to note traces of black dust on the snow where the cloud had passed.
„Barl, what on Earth — or rather, on Mesklin — was the stuff you used for that fire cloud? And didn’t it occur to you that it might crack the windows in this tank?” The captain, who had remained on the ship and was near one of his radios, answered promptly.
„I’m sorry, Charles; I didn’t know what your windows are made of, and never thought of our flame cloud as a danger to your great machine. I will be more careful next time. The fuel is simply a dust which we obtain from certain plants-it is found as fairly large crystals, which we have to pulverize very carefully and away from all light.” Lackland nodded slowly, digesting this information. His chemical knowledge was slight, but it was sufficient to make a good guess at the fuel’s nature. Ignited by, light — burned in hydrogen with a white cloud — black specks on the snow — it could, as far as he knew, be only one thing. Chlorine is solid at Mesklin’s temperature; it combines violently with hydrogen, and hydrogen chloride is white when in fine powder form; methane snow boiled from the ground would also give up its hydrogen to the voracious element and leave carbon. Interesting plant life this world sported! He must make another report to Toorey — or perhaps he had better save this tidbit in case he annoyed Rosten again.
„I am very sorry I endangered your tank.” Barlennan still seemed to feel apologetic. „Perhaps we had better let you deal with such creatures with your gun; or perhaps you could teach us to use it. Is it, like the radios, especially built to work on Mesklin?” The captain wondered if he had gone too far with this suggestion, but decided it had been worth it. He could neither see nor interpret Lackland’s answering smile.
„No, the gun was not remade or changed for this world, Barl. It works fairly well here, but I’m afraid it would be pretty useless in your country.” He picked up a slide rule, and added one more sentence after employing it for a moment. „The farthest this thing could possibly shoot at your pole would be just about one hundred fifty feet.”
Barlennan, disappointed, said nothing further. Several days were spent in butchering the dead monster. Lackland salvaged the skull as a further protection from Rosten’s ire, and the cavalcade resumed its journey.
Mile after mile, day after day, the tank and its tow inched onward. Still they sighted occasional cities of the rock-rollers; two or three times they picked up food for Lackland which had been left in their path by the rocket; quite frequently they encountered large animals, some like the one Barlennan’s fire had slain, others very different in size and build. Twice specimens of giant herbivores were netted and killed by the crew to furnish meat, much to Lackland’s admiration. The discrepancy in size was far greater than that existing between Earthly elephants and the African pygmies who sometimes hunted them.
The country grew hillier as they progressed, and with the rising ground the river, Which they had followed intermittently for hundreds of miles, shrank and split into numerous smaller streams. Two of ‘these tributaries had been rather difficult to cross, requiring that the Bree be unlashed from the sled and floated across at the end of a towrope while tank and sled drove below the surface on the river bed. Now, however, the streams had become so narrow that the sled actually bridged them and no such delays occurred.
At long last, fully twelve hundred miles from where the Bree had wintered and some three hundred south of the equator, with Lackland bowing under an additional half gravity, the streams began to bear definitely in the general direction of their travel. Both Lackland and Barlennan let several days pass before mentioning it, wishing to be sure, but at last there was no more doubt that they were in the watershed leading to the eastern ocean. Morale, which had never been low, nevertheless improved noticeably; and several sailors could now always be found on the tank’s roof hoping for the first glimpse of the sea as they reached each hilltop. Even Lackland, tired sometimes to the point of nausea, brightened up; and as his relief was the greater, so proportionately greater was his shock and dismay when they came, with practically no warning, to the edge of an escarpment; an almost sheer drop of over sixty feet, stretching as far as the eye could see at right angles to their course.
For long moments nothing was said. Both Lackland and Barlennan, who had worked so carefully over the photographs from which the map of their journey had been prepared, were far too astonished to speak. The crew, though by no means devoid of initiative, decided collectively and at the first glance to leave this problem to their captain and his alien friend.
„How could it have been there?” Barlennan was first to speak. „I can see it’s not high, compared to the vessel from which your pictures were taken, but should it not have cast a shadow far across the country below, in the minutes before sunset?”
„It should, Barl, and I can think of only one reason it escaped us. Each picture, you recall, covered many square miles; one alone would include all the land we can see from here, and much more. The picture that does cover this area must have been made between sunrise and noon, when there would have been no shadow.”
„Then this cliff does not extend past the boundary of that one picture?”
„Possibly; or, just as possibly, it chanced that two or three adjacent shots were all made in the morning — I don’t know just what course ‘the photo rocket flew. If, as I should imagine, it went east and west, it wouldn’t be too great a coincidence for it to pass the cliff several times running at about the same time of day.
„Still, there’s little point in going through that question. The real problem, since the cliff obviously does exist, is how to continue our journey.” That question produced another silence, which lasted for some time. It was broken, to the surprise of at least two people, by the first mate.
„Would it not be advisable to have the Flyer’s friends far above learn for us just how far this cliff extends to either side? It may be possible to descend an easier slope without too great a detour. It should not be hard for them to make new maps, if this cliff was missed on the first.” Barlennan translated this remark, which was made in the mate’s own language. Lackland raised his eyebrows.
„Your friend may as well speak English himself, Barl — he appears to know enough to understand our last conversation. Or do you have some means of communicating it to him that I don’t know about?”
Barlennan whirled on his mate, startled and, after a moment, confused. He had not reported the conversation to Dondragmer; evidently the Flyer was right — his mate had learned some English. Unfortunately, however, the second guess had also some truth; Barlennan had long been sure that many of the sounds his vocal apparatus could produce were not audible to the Earthman, though he could not guess at the reason. For several seconds he was confused, trying to decide whether it would be better to reveal Dondragmer’s ability, the secret of their communication, both together, or, if he could talk fast enough, neither. Barlennan did the best he could.
„Apparently Dondragmer is sharper than I realized. Is it true that you have learned some of the Flyer’s language, Don?” This he asked in English, and in a pitch that Lackland could hear. In the shriller tones that his own language employed so much he added, „Tell the truth — I want to cover up as long as possible the fact that we can talk without his hearing. Answer in his own language, if you can.” The mate obeyed, though not even his captain could have guessed at his thoughts.
„I have learned much of your language, Charles Lackland. I did not realize you would object.”
„I don’t mind at all, Don; I am very pleased and, I admit, surprised. I would gladly have taught you as well as Barl if you had come to my station. Since you have learned on your own — I suppose from comparing our conversations and your captain’s resultant activities — please enter our discussion. The suggestion you made a moment ago was sound; I will call the Toorey station at once.”
The operator on the moon answered immediately, since a constant guard was now being maintained on the tank’s main transmitter frequency through several relay stations drifting in Mesklin’s outer ring. He indicated understanding of the problem, and promised that a survey would be made as quickly as possible.
„As quickly as possible,” however, meant quite a number of Mesklin’s days; and while waiting the trio endeavored to formulate other plans in case the cliff could not be rounded within a reasonable distance.
One or two of the sailors expressed a willingness to jump down the cliff, to Barlennan’s anxiety — he felt that the natural fear of height should not be replaced with complete contempt, even though the entire crew now shared his willingness to climb and jump. Lackland was called upon to help disuade these foolhardy individuals, which he managed to do by computing that the sixty-foot drop of the cliff was about equal to a one-foot fall at the latitude of their home country. This revived enough memory of childhood experience to put a stop to the idea. The captain, thinking over this event afterward, realized that by his own lifelong standards he had a crew composed entirely of lunatics, with himself well to the front in degree of aberration; but he was fairly sure that this particular form of insanity was going to be useful.
Ideas more practical than these were not forthcoming for some time; and Lackland took the opportunity to catch up on his sleep, which he badly needed. He had had two long sessions in his bunk, interrupted by a hearty meal, when the report of the surveying rocket came in. It was brief and discouraging. The cliff ran into the sea some six hundred miles northeast of their present location, almost exactly on the equator. In the opposite’ direction it ran for some twelve hundred miles, growing very gradually lower, and disappearing completely at about the five-gravity latitude. It was not perfectly straight, showing a deep bend away from the ocean at one point; the tank had struck it at this point. Two rivers fell over its edge within the limits of the bay, and the tank was neatly caught between them, since in the interests of common sanity the Bree could never be towed across either without first going many miles upstream from the tremendous cataracts. One of the falls was about thirty miles away, almost due south; the other approximately a hundred miles distant to the north and east around the curve of the cliff. The rocket had not, of course, been able to examine the entire stretch of escarpment in complete detail from the altitude it had had to maintain, but the interpreter was very doubtful that the tank could scale it at any point. The best bet, however, would be near one of the falls, where erosion was visible and might conceivably have created negotiable paths.
„How in blazes can a cliff like this form?” Lackland asked resentfully when he had heard all this. „Eighteen hundred miles of ridge just high enough to be a nuisance, and we have to run right into it. I bet it’s the only thing of its kind on the planet.”
„Don’t bet too much,” the surveyor retorted. „The physiography boys just nodded in pleasure when I told them about it. One of them said he was surprised you hadn’t hit one earlier; then another piped up and said actually you’d expect most of them farther from the equator, so it wasn’t surprising at all. They were still at it when I left them. I guess you’re lucky that your small friend is going to do most of the traveling for you.”
„That’s a thought.” Lackland paused as another idea struck him. „If these faults are so common, you might tell me whether there are any more Jbetween here and the sea. Will you have to run another survey?”
„No. I saw the geologists before I started on this one, and looked. If you can, get down this step, you’re all right-in fact, you could launch your friend’s ship in the river at the foot and he could make it alone. Your only remaining problem is to get that sailboat hoisted over the edge.”
„To get — hmm. I know you meant that figuratively, Hank, but you may have something there. Thanks for everything; I may want to talk to you later.” Lackland turned away from the set and lay back on his bunk, thinking furiously. He had never seen the Bree afloat; she had been beached before he encountered Barlennan, and on the recent occasions when he had towed her across rivers he had himself been below the surface most of the time in the tank. Therefore he did not know how high the vessel floated. Still, to float at all on an ocean of liquid methane she must be extremely light, since methane is less than half as dense as water. Also she was not hollow — did not float, that is, by virtue of a large central air space which lowered her average density, as does a. steel ship on Earth. The „wood” of which the Bree was made was light enough to float on methane and support the ship’s crew and a substantial cargo as well.
An individual raft, therefore, could not weigh more than a few ounces — perhaps a couple of pounds, on this world at this point. At that rate, Lackland himself could stand on the edge of the cliff and let down several rafts at a time; any two sailors could probably lift the ship bodily, if they could be persuaded to get under it. Lackland himself had no rope or cable other than what he was using to tow the sled; but that was one commodity of which the Bree herself had an ample supply. The sailors should certainly be able to rig hoisting gear that would take care of the situation — or could they? On Earth it would be elementary seamanship; on Mesklin, with these startling but understandable prejudices against lifting and jumping and throwing and everything else involving any height, the situation might be different. Well, Bar-lennan’s sailors could at least tie knots, and the idea of towing should not be too strange to them now; so undoubtedly the matter could be straightened out. The real, final problem was whether or not the sailors would object to being lowered over the cliff along with their ship. Some men might have laid that question aside as strictly a problem for the ship’s captain, but Lackland more than suspected that he would have to contribute to its solution.
Barlennan’s opinion, however, was certainly needed at this point; and reaching.out a heavy arm, Lackland energized his smaller transmitter and called his tiny friend.
„Barl, I’ve been wondering. Why couldn’t your people lower the ship over the cliff on cables, one raft at a time, and reassemble it at the bottom?” „How would you get down?”
„I wouldn’t. There is a large river about thirty miles south of here that should be navigable all the way to the sea, if Hank Stearman’s report is accurate. What I’m suggesting is that I tow you over to the fall, help you any way I can in getting the Bree over the edge, watch you launch her in the river, and wish you the best of luck — all we can do for you from then on is give weather and navigation information, as we agreed. You have ropes, do you not, which will hold the weight of a raft?”
„Of course; ordinary cordage would take the weight of the entire ship in this neighborhood. We’d have to snub the lines against trees or your tank or something like that; the whole crew together couldn’t furnish traction enough for the job. Still, that’s no problem. I’d say you had the answer, Charles.”
„How about the personnel? Will they like the idea of being lowered down that way?” Barlennan thought for a moment.
„I think it will be all right. I’ll send them down on the rafts, with a job to do like fending off from the cliff. That will keep them from looking straight down, and sufficiently occupied so they shouldn’t be thinking of the height. Anyway, with this light feeling everyone has” — Lackland groaned silently — ”no one’s much afraid of a fall anyway; not even as much as they should be. We’ll make that part, all right. Had we better start for that cataract right away?”
„All right.” Lackland hauled himself to his controls, suddenly very weary. His part of the job was nearly over, sooner than he had expected, and his body shrieked for relief from the endless weight it had dragged around for the last seven months. Perhaps he shouldn’t have stayed through the winter, but tired as he was, he could not regret it. The tank swung to the right and started moving once more, parallel to the cliff edge two hundred yards away. The Mesklinites might be getting over their horror of heights, but Lackland was developing one. Besides, he had never attempted to repair the main spotlight since their first battle with Mesklin’s animal life, and he had no intention of driving close to that edge at night with only the running lights to guide him.
They made the cataract in a single lap of about twenty days. Both natives and Earthman heard it long before they arrived, at first a vague trembling in the air that gradually rose through a muted thunder to a roar that put even the Mesklinite vocal equipment to shame. It was day when they came in sight of it, and Lackland stopped involuntarily as they did so. The river was half a mile wide where it reached the brink, and smooth as glass — no rocks or other irregularities appeared to exist in its bed. It simply curled over the edge and spilled downward. The fall had eroded its way for a full mile back from the cliff line; and they had a splendid view of the gorge. The ripple marks gave no clue to the liquid’s speed of fall, but the violence with which the spray erupted from the bottom did. Even in this gravity and atmosphere a permanent cloud of mist hid the lower half of the curved sheet, thinning gradually away from its foot to reveal the roiled, eddied surface of the lower river. There was no wind except that created by the fall itself, and the stream grew rapidly calmer as it moved smoothly away toward the ocean.
The crew of the Bree had gone overboard the moment the tank stopped; and the way they were strung out along the rim of the gorge indicated that there would not be much morale difficulty during the descent. Now Barlennan called them back to the ship, and work commenced at once. Lackland relaxed once more while cordage was dragged forth and a plumb line dropped over the edge to secure a more precise measure of the cliff’s height. Some of the sailors began securing all loose gear about the rafts, though preparations for the original journey had left little to do in this respect; others reached down between the rafts and began unfastening the lashings which held them together and checking at the same time the buffers that held them safely apart. They were fast workers, and raft after raft was dragged away from the main body of the ship.
Barlennan and his first mate, once this work was well under way, went over to the edge to determine the best place for the lowering operation. The gorge itself was rejected at once; the river within its walls was too rough, even if they had wanted to do their reassembling while afloat. It turned out, however, that almost any point on the cliff face would be suitable, so the officers quickly chose one as close as possible to the mouth of the gorge. The reassembled ship or its separate parts would have to be dragged to the river without the tank’s help, and there was no point in making the journey any longer than necessary.
