Close to Critical (21 page)

He decided to go to the communication room in person, instead of working from Raeker's station - the relay system was efficient, but located in a corner which was rather inconvenient to him for anatomical reasons. Unfortunately, when he reached the other compartment it was even worse; the place was crowded with human beings. Rearing the front half of his long body upward he was able to see over them without any trouble, and discovered that the screen of the set tied in with the bathyscaphe was imaging the face of the human child. His own son was also visible, very much in the background, but only the human voice was audible - as usual, he reflected. The men were listening intently to her, and Aminadabarlee quite unthhikingly stopped to do the same before ordering the interfering creatures out of the way.

"No matter how we ask the question, we always get the same answer," she was saying. "At first, he seemed surprised that we didn't know; he's gotten over that now, but still says that Nick and Fagin told him where we were."

"No matter how often you say that, it sounds silly to me," retorted one of the scientists. "Are you sure it's not language trouble?"

"Perfectly sure." Easy showed no indignation, if she felt any at the question. "You wanted to know how he found us so easily, and that's what I asked him. He claims he was given the information he needed by Nick, who had it from the robot, and that's what I told you. I don't remember exactly what was said to that prisoner when Nick's people had him; but you'd better play back the transcript and see what you can get out of it. Either the prisoner himself was able to figure it out from what Nick said to him, or Swift was able to do it from the prisoner's repetition. The first seems to make more sense, to me." There were few flies on Easy Rich. Aminadabarlee wouldn't have agreed with that, of course; her admission that she couldn't remember exactly what had been said in a conversation she had overheard lowered her considerably in his estimation. However, even he couldn't understand, any better than the listening scientists, what the cave dwellers had been able to learn from a brief description of country they had admittedly never seen.

Then an idea occurred to him, and he dropped back to the horizontal position for a few moments to think. This might really do some good; he almost felt guilty at the thought that he'd left all the serious planning in this matter to the human beings. If they'd only keep quiet for a minute or two and let him get his idea straight - But they didn't. They kept on calling excited remarks and questions to the child so far away.

"Wait a minute!" It was a geophysicist who suddenly came up with a point. Aminadabarlee thought, but he didn't pay enough attention to be really sure. "This may be a little far-fetched; but a lot of fairly primitive peoples on Earth and other places get pretty darned good climate predictors - our ancestors knew when spring was coming, you know, and built places like Stonehenge."

"What's the connection?" Several voices asked this question, though not all in the same words. "This planet has no weather, in our sense of the word; but its geomorphology goes on at a time-rate which almost puts it in the climate class. I just remembered that Nick's prisoner was told that the bathyscaphe stayed on one lake, motionless, for several days, and only then started to drift down a river to the sea. If we're right about Tenebran weather, that must have been a brand-new river! That information was enough for any native - at least for any one who hadn't been cut off from the history or folklore or whatever the Tenebran equivalent may be of his race. They may never have been right on the scene of that river, but it was close enough to their regular stamping grounds so they could tell where it must lie." "I'm going to check the lab alcohol," commented one listener. The remark put the proponent of the new idea on his mettle.

"Easy!" he called. "You heard what I just suggested. Ask Swift if it's not true that he knows when things like new rivers and rising hills are going to happen. Ask him how he dares to live in caves in a cliff - which as far as any of us can see is apt to be knocked down by a quake! Any day!"

"All right," the girl said calmly. Her face vanished from the screen. Aminadabarlee was too furious to notice that she had gone. How dare these little monsters take his very own ideas right out of his mind, and claim them for their own? He hadn't quite worked out the details of his notion, but it was going to be the same as the one the human scientist had broached; he was sure of that. Of course, maybe it was a bit far-fetched - of course it was, now that he thought of it a little more carefully. The whole idea was the sheerest speculation, and it was a pity that the girl had been sent to waste time on it. He'd go in and show its weaknesses to his son, and suggest a more fruitful modification, as soon as he worked out its details - only then did he notice that Aminadorneldo had also disappeared from the view screen; he must have gone with the human girl. Well, that was all right; there was a little more thinking to be done, anyway. He kept at it for fifteen or twenty minutes, scarcely noticing the human conversation around him, until the children reappeared. They reported without preamble and without apparent excitement.

"You seem to be right," Easy said. "They seem surprised that anyone wouldn't know when a place was going to become active in quakes, or when a lake was going to spill, and in what direction. They know it so well themselves that they have a good deal of trouble telling me what they use for signs." The geophysicist and his colleagues looked at each other almost prayerfully.

"Don't let them stop trying!" the first one said earnestly. "Get down everything they say and relay it to us, whether you understand it or not. And we were going to use Raeker's students to learn the crustal dynamics of this planet!"

This irrelevance was the last straw, as far as Aminadabarlee was concerned. Without regard to rules of courtesy, either human or Drommian, he plowed into the communications room, his streamlined form dividing the human occupants as a ship divides water. He brought up in front of the screen and, looking past Easy's imaged face as though the girl were not there, he burst into an ear-hurting babble of his own language, directed at his son. None of the men interrupted; the creature's size and the ten-clawed limbs would have given most of them ideas of caution even if they had known nothing of Drommians. As it was, Councillor Rich had spread some very impressive bits of information through the complement of the Vindemiatrix, so ideas weren't necessary.

The shrill sounds were punctuated by others from the speaker; apparently the son was trying to get an occasional word into the conversation. He failed, however; the older being's speech only stopped when he appeared to have run out of words to say. Then it was not Aminadorneldo who answered. It was Easy, and she answered in her own language, since even her vocal cords couldn't handle Drommian speech.

"We've already told him, sir. Dr. Raeker asked me to let you know when you showed up; you had just left his room when we got the information to him, and I didn't see you until just now. He's told Nick, and the boat should be as close as they can bring it on the sea well before night. They'll start to bring it inland then; Swift says they should be able to see our lights from the sea, so the robot has started back to the camp to meet the others and start them on the way here."

The Drommian seemed stunned, but remembered enough of his manners to shift languages. "You had already asked Swift to tell the way from the camp to where you are?" he asked rather lamely. "Oh, yes. 'Mina thought of it some time ago. I should have told Dr. Raeker or one of you sooner." The news that it had been his son's idea calmed Aminadabarlee considerably; privately, most of the men in the room wondered how much truth the girl was speaking. They knew the effective age of the young Drommian, and they were coming to know Easy.

"How long will it take to get to you - for Nick, that is?" asked Aminadabarlee.

"Swift thinks by mid-afternoon, on foot; he doesn't know how fast the boat goes, though."

"Did you tell him about the boat?"

"Of course. He was wondering how he could get over closer to the ship here; this pool we're in the middle of is too deep for his people to wade, and they don't seem to swim. I suggested floating over on a raft made of wood, but the wood on this crazy planet sinks, we found out."

"You seem to be getting in a lot of talk with those people. Are you really good at their language?"

"Pretty good, but we're still very slow. If there's anything you want to ask Swift, though, let's have it."

"No - nothing right now," said the Drommian hastily. "You didn't suggest that your friend Swift make a raft of the sort Nick has?"

"I did, but he can't do it. His people can get all the skins they'd need, of course, but they can't make tight enough - I was going to say air-tight - bags out of them. They don't know how to make the glue Nick used, and neither do I. He's waiting until Nick gets here with the boat."

"And then will take it away from him, of course."

"Oh, no. He has nothing against Nick. I've told him who Nick is - how the robot stole the eggs from the place where Swift's people leave them to hatch. I think he may be a little mad at the robot, but that's all right. I've said I'd teach him anything he wanted to know, and that Nick had learned a lot and would help. We're getting along very well." The Drommian was startled, and showed it.

"Did Dr. Raeker suggest all this to you?"

"Oh, no; I thought of it myself - or rather, 'Mina and I did. It seemed smartest to be friends with these cave people; they might not be able to hurt the ship if they got mad at us, but we couldn't be sure."

"I see." Aminadabarlee was a trifle dazed. He ended the conversation casually and courteously - he had never used toward Easy the mannerisms which were so natural with him when he talked to other human beings - and started to make his way back to Raeker's observation room. The scientists were questioning the girl once more before he was out of the room. He seemed to be fated to choose bad times to move, that day. He had been in the corridors when Easy had given the bathyscaphe's location to Raeker and Nick; he was in them when the four explorers who had discovered the volcano returned and made their report to their teacher. He had stopped to eat, as a matter of fact, and didn't get back to the observation room until the report was finished. By that time the four natives and the robot were heading south with the cart in tow, answering a ceaseless flood of questions from the scientists, some of whom had been content to use the relay system while others had come down to the observation room, The bewildered Drommian found the latter compartment almost as crowded as the communication room had been a while earlier, and it took him some tune to get up to date from the questions and comments flying around.

"Maybe we could get the distance by triangulation - the wind at camp and 'scaphe must be blowing right toward it."

"But we don't know absolute directions at either place. Besides, the wind might be deflected by Coriolis action."

"Not much, on a world like Tenebra. You have it backward, though; the mountain is already on the maps. With a little more data we could use the wind direction to pin down the 'scaphe - That was what the Drommian heard as he came in; it confused him badly. A little later, when he had deduced the existence of the volcano, it made a little more sense; he could see how such a source of heat could set up currents even in Tenebra's brutally compressed envelope. By then it was another question that was perturbing him.

"How strong do you suppose the wind will get? If it brings the sea farther inland each night, and the sea carries the bathyscaphe with it, how close will those kids be carried to the volcano?"

"I don't think we need worry for quite a while. Wind or no wind, the sea that far inland will be mostly water, and won't float them very far. I'll bet if that thing keeps on, too, there won't even be liquid water wihin miles of it, by night or day."

"Liquid or gas, it might still move the ship. The difference in density isn't worth mentioning."

"The difference in viscosity is." Aminadabarlee heard no more of that one, either; it had given him something to worry about, and he was good at worrying. He started back to the communicating room at top speed, which for him was high; he didn't want anything else to happen while he was out of touch. He managed to reach his goal without hurting anyone, though there was a narrow escape or two as his long form flashed along the corridors.

The scientists had left Easy for the new attraction, and the bathyscaphe screen was blank for the moment. Aminadabarlee didn't pause to wonder whether the children were asleep or just talking to the cavedwellers; also, he didn't stop to wonder whether the question he had in mind should be mentioned in their hearing or not. He would have berated Raeker soundly for such a thing; but this, of course, was different. "Miss Rich! 'Mina!" he shrilled unceremoniously into the microphone. For a minute or so there was no answer, and he repeated the call with what another member of his race would have recognized as overtones of impatience. Few human beings would have caught any difference from his normal tones. This time Easy appeared on the screen rubbing sleep out of her eyes, a gesture which either meant nothing to him or which he chose to ignore.

"Where's my son?" he asked.

"Asleep." Easy would not normally have been so short.

"Well, you'll probably do. Did you hear that they've found out what caused the wind?" "Yes; I gather it's a volcano. I went to sleep just after that. Has anyone come up with more news?" "Not exactly news. It's occurred to some of those human fortune tellers that your ship may be blown a little closer to the volcano each night, until you're in serious trouble. What does your friend Swift think about that? He's supposed to be able to predict what his planet is going to do, and he seems to have been able to find you each morning so far."

"We'll, we certainly can't get there for several days; we can't see the light from the volcano from here." "You mean you can't; it's what the natives can see, and what they think, that counts. Have you asked Swift?"