Heavy Planet (24 page)

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Authors: Hal Clement

BOOK: Heavy Planet
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Barlennan was partly right; the descent had started too soon, from one point of view. They were in the grip of the cliffward wind well before they reached the ground. It might, however, be too late as well; the fuel was going rapidly. The natives were unfamiliar with alien literature and would probably never have thought of using part of their basket for the fuel. This was probably just as well, since anything which distracted Hars from his piloting would very probably have killed the four of them. As it was, they were saved almost certainly by the fact that something else was approaching from the direction of the cliff.
It was not methane. At least, it certainly was not ocean-pure methane; it could barely be called a liquid. Slush or mud would be better words. It lay under them as the supporting heat dwindled below the ability of the guiding deflectors to keep the balloon contents hot enough.
The first wrinkles appeared in the bag; Karondrasee’s bellow of alarm just barely preceded contact between the basket and the semi-fluid. The car stopped almost at once, after a fall violent enough to make the stuff splash and jolt the occupants severely; the bag took rather longer to touch. The cordage tried to pull the basket toward the cliff as the wind still dragged at the balloon. For just a moment Barlennan thought the car would be tipped over and dump its fire, and had enough time to wonder what would happen when the latter met the whatever-it-was; then it appeared that there was enough weight stuck—frozen?—under their feet to hold them nearly level.
They were more or less safe, it appeared, for the moment, but like Dondragmer they were uncomfortably warm.
There seemed no practical way out of the basket for the moment; the stuff surrounding them appeared dangerously hot, and there was no way to tell yet whether this would get worse, or better, or remain unchanged, not that the last would be much help.
The captain didn’t bother to ask the Flyers anything.
“Dondragmer, can you hear me?”
“Yes, Captain.”
“Have you been able to get back near the ship?”
“We’re closer.”
“How’s the heat? We’re down, but are stuck in some sort of goo. There’s a lot of ammonia smell, but it doesn’t look much like ammonia.”
“That’s happened here, too. It’s what’s keeping us from getting any closer
to where the ship was. It looks and smells to me like the methane-ammonia slush we saw a good deal of where we wintered and met the Flyers, but that may be just a guess. If it’s right, the ammonia should freeze after a while and sink and leave ordinary methane on top, which should soon be cool enough to swim in. The Flyers won’t commit themselves either, but agree we should watch for clear liquid to show on top of the stuff.”
“I hadn’t thought of that, but here we’ll have to wait anyway. I hope we don’t cook while we’re still waiting.”
“Is your fire out? Or is there any chance of flying the
Bree
again?”
“None, I’d say, unless we can get rid of whatever is stuck all over the bottom of the basket and must have kept us from tipping over when we hit. Maybe we should take a chance on putting the heater out. I’ve been a little uneasy about letting fire get near the stuff around us, or vice versa, because I thought that might burn too; but if you’re right there won’t be any trouble.”
“If
I’m right. Pardon me for sounding like a Flyer, but I said I was guessing.”
“Now that you’ve reminded me, I’m guessing right along with you. In any case, it’s getting warmer all the time here, and something has got to be done.”
“How about just going over the side, and seeing if being farther from your fire will be enough?”
Barlennan did not answer at once. If such an experiment were to be tried, there was just one person who would have to go over first. He temporized briefly.
“There’s no sign of the stuff settling, where you are? No liquid on top?”
“No. If it’s going to happen, it should be upstream where you are, first, I’d guess.”
“Is there any stream? There doesn’t seem to be any flow here.”
“No. I suppose the fall blocked it.”
“But the methane from upriver should flow around, and even if the original bed were filled with rock the river should just be pushed out farther from the cliff than before.”
“Maybe it was,” the mate answered thoughtfully. “Maybe that’s the liquid part of this stuff. But if it is, I wonder where the ammonia came from?”
“We’re arguing like Flyers,” the captain cut off the debate. “I’ll reach over and find out how hot this stuff is.”
The caterpillarlike Mesklinite anatomy was not constructed for toe-dipping; Barlennan had to reach over the side with one end or the other of his body, and lower a set of pincers into the stuff. He chose to use his head end, for whatever help his eyes might give him.
“Barlennan?” It was Jeanette’s voice.
“I hear you.”
“Are you all right, and is the tracker still working?”
“We’re uncomfortable but still alive. I haven’t looked at the machine since
we stopped. I don’t suppose heat will hurt it, considering who made it. I’ll shade it so I can see the figures and get a reading.”
“Whenever you can, please. There are people here who will have trouble breathing until they learn its condition, now that we know you’re all right. Its reading here hasn’t changed for some minutes now.”
Jeanette was not actually a skilled liar, but had some natural diplomatic ability. It seemed unlikely that the captain, just now, would be able to sympathize very well with people worrying more about the instrument’s condition than his own.
“That’s reasonable,” Barlennan concurred. “We’ve been stranded for some time now. Here’s what I read.” He pronounced the symbols carefully.
“Good. That’s what we have here. If it should change its reading, please let me know.”
Another thought struck the captain. “Can you tell us whether the fall is still going on, upstream? Dondragmer says it stopped just below his location.”
“It did. We can see clearly with his communicator. I can’t answer your question. You’re practically at the pole, we’re over the equator. The only reason we can see your area at all from here is atmospheric refraction, which doesn’t help the image. Otherwise you’d be below our horizon. We’d have to send out another mapping rocket.”
“Do your people think that’s worth doing? I’d be glad of any information I could get from that direction.”
“I’ll ask.” The Flyer’s voice fell silent, and there seemed no more excuse for delay in testing the slush, if that’s what it was.
Gingerly, his head and a few inches of his body over the basket’s gunwale, Barlennan reached a chela toward the nearly white stuff. The sun was low as always at this latitude and season. At the moment it was beyond cliff and fog, but there was plenty of light. He could feel some warmth from the surface of whatever-it-was, but it didn’t seem as bad as before.
About like the inside of the balloon bag, which had been found to be bearable much earlier when control lines had tangled in flight.
The stuff was soft, though it resisted a little when poked. Whether it would be firm enough to support his weight, and what would happen if it weren’t, were still open questions. There was only one way to get answers that the captain could see. At least, only one which could preserve his self-respect; he
could
order one of the others to climb over. He didn’t.
The stuff did resemble the slush they had encountered near the equator, as the mate had said. It was uncomfortably but not dangerously warm. It did not support him until he had sunk perhaps a third of his body volume. His report, when he finally got back in the basket with the assistance of the others and a length of rope, paraphrased history for some of the human listeners.
“Too soft to walk on, too hard to swim in. We’re here for a while, but we can stand the heat. Have you tried it, Dondragmer?”
“Yes, Captain. You describe it well. We think we can see the ship, but whatever it is is almost entirely immersed in the slush, and we can’t be sure. If it is, it’s well to this side of the fallen rocks.”
“Good. Find out for sure as quickly as possible.”
The mate acknowledged the order which both knew to be superfluous.
Half a day later, with the sun on their own side of the former cliff, nothing had been accomplished except testing the inertial tracker. This had been carried from one side of the basket to the other, and the change in readings on its surface and at the receivers on Toorey had remained in agreement. Barlennan was not surprised; from his point of view nothing at all violent had happened during the wrecking of
Bree Three.
The slush was still slush. This surprised the Flyers, who seemed to feel that if anything were going to settle at all it should do it pretty quickly on Mesklin; Barlennan had no basis for an opinion, though he certainly wished that something would happen.
Fog was still rising from the slope a few hundred feet away. The Flyer prediction that the wind should cool the fallen rock fairly quickly seemed to have been another mistake. Barlennan didn’t raise the subject; he was quite sure that the beings would point out that they hadn’t actually specified a time numerically. This was quite true, and qualified as an excuse even by the captain’s standards.
There had been, twice, sounds from inside the fog suggesting that rocks had moved, and the four people in the basket were alert for anything more of the sort. Dondragmer’s people had heard nothing like it, the mate reported; but they, too, were listening. Anything like that should happen upstream first, each told himself. This was not mentioned aloud.
The fire had not been extinguished after the captain’s experiment, but was now dead for lack of fuel. There were plenty of Mesklin’s scraggy plants in sight in various directions on the shore beyond the slush, but there was no way to reach them; and there seemed not to be enough of them to get
Bree Three
into the air again in any case. Karondrasee had plenty of meat juice in his tank, but there seemed no way to use it.
It was two whole days before anything noteworthy happened, and its development then was gradual.
There were more of the falling-rock sounds. Nothing could be seen; the fog, if anything, was thicker, and the breeze toward the rubble slope somewhat faster.
Then another quite familiar sound made itself heard.
“Captain! A current! Flowing—” Hars uttered the words very softly for a Mesklinite, though Jeanette had no trouble hearing him. She heard the trickling of liquid, too, since the pilot had been doing his best not to drown it out with his own voice.
“Which way? Can any of you tell?” she asked. Barlennan couldn’t decide
himself; the sound had seemed to come first from the direction of the rocks, then from what had been upstream, then from many directions at once. The most convincing came from the fog.
Flowing liquid? Methane? Was the ammonia, if that’s what it was, finally starting to settle?
Methane, yes. Settling ammonia, apparently not. Motion caught the eyes of the four crewmen in several directions almost at once. Most of it was from cliffward and upstream, but Barlennan caught sight of a trickle which seemed to rise from almost under the basket, a rivulet which spread, and grew, and flowed downriver as he watched. Others appeared and behaved the same way, more and more, minute after minute; then quite suddenly, they vanished in a single spreading sheet of liquid which they now realized covered much of the landscape in the upstream direction. It was as though the river had resumed flowing, and was coming up
through
the slush, and making a new bed for itself beyond the tumbled rocks which had filled the old one.
It was methane, as taste promptly proved—it was not a laboratory situation to the Mesklinites, who were by now pretty thirsty anyway. The river was being reborn.
Yes, reborn. There was plenty of liquid coming from upstream, but there was nearly as much—perhaps more—welling up from under the slush and from the direction of the rocks.
The basket began to move, as Jeanette promptly reported.
“We know,” the captain replied tersely.
“Will you float?” asked the Flyer.
“We should. The basket’s made of wood—real wood, not that funny stuff from the ammonia flats. What we need to know is whether it’ll float
level
. We didn’t worry that much about weight distribution when we made it.”
“How about the bag?”
“That’s another question. We may have to cut it free. Depends whether it acts more like a sea anchor or a sail. Dondragmer, we must be heading your way. I can’t guess how long we’ll be getting there.”
“We’re watching, Captain. If you have to free the bag, we’ll try to capture it, and you of course. The slush is still slush down here, but we’re watching for liquid, too. If the thing we think is the ship starts to move, I’ll take swimmers to do what we can.”
“Good. We’re going to be busy here, but one of us will keep in touch. If you don’t hear from us for more than a few seconds, you’ll know something we didn’t expect has happened. In that case, send some people up this way to give any help they can. We’re going faster, I think. The bag is dragging behind us, whether it’s touching bottom or feeling wind I don’t know. Probably wind, I think; there’s an upstream component to that now, and the bag itself is pulling a little toward the fog. It’s pulling us that way too.”

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