by Hal Clement
“Yes, sir.” Barlennan listened anxiously; giving the fellow something to occupy his mind was one thing, putting him where he wouldn’t expect to see upward might be even better. The information would be useful, of course, but the action might keep the fellow from complete panic.
The liquid was quiet; they were moving with it, not through it, and the sound as it slid around the rocks which must be there was hardly audible. The other three could hear as Sherrer measured his line, secured it at both ends, and slipped overboard. Without order, Hars gripped the inboard end of the cord with a holding nipper.
“He’s pulling away a bit, Captain; I don’t suppose he can see to keep near us. I’ll give him a tug or two to let him know.” Barlennan didn’t bother to answer. “There’s some slack, now. What pull there is is smooth; he can’t have met anything solid.”
Sherrer’s voice abruptly sounded, muffled by the methane-air interface but quite audible. The Mesklinite vocal apparatus, a modified part of their ancestors’ swimming siphons, worked impressively well in both media. “We’re going a little better than walking speed, Captain. I’m on the bottom. It seems to be that slush rather than rock most of the time, though I hit something solid every little while. Shall I try to slow the basket, if I can get a good grip on anything?” The sailor seemed perfectly calm now.
“Try, but not too hard; if you get pulled free by the basket, don’t fight it,” replied Barlennan.
“Yes, sir. The liquid’s getting shallower, I think.”
There was no more after that to be said; the sailor had been right about decreasing depth. Moments later, everyone still in the basket recognized the sensation as their craft ran aground on an oozy surface. Instantly the captain snapped further orders.
“You two—lines on yourselves and go overside. Get away from here in different directions. Use voice softly to keep yourselves apart—no echoes if you can help it. Find out everything there is around here, out as far as your lines will allow. If there is anything we can moor to, report at once and then start doing it.”
He was obeyed promptly, and submerged hoots and howls began to echo around the basket. There were, it turned out, plenty of rocks projecting from the ammonia-smelling ooze; some of them barely broke the surface of the methane, many extended upward farther than the sailors could reach. In less than half a day, as well as anyone could guess, they were moored solidly to five different bases, two of them too high to flip a noose over. At least they shouldn’t get any farther from the outside.
Getting back to it might be rather different.
All three of the sailors who had been overboard sounded easier in their minds. The captain wasn’t sure whether this could be attributed to lack of upward vision, or just to being occupied; but there was a way to test.
He groped his way to the now cold fire box—cold only in comparison to its working state; the surroundings still felt like the inside of the balloon bag in flight—and felt for the control baffles which had directed the lifting air. These were made of the same fabric as the bag itself, stretched on light wooden frames. Carefully he nipped out a section of the material and deliberately spread it over his head and eyes.
The only obvious difference was that he could no longer see the tracker’s characters. He felt no easier about what lay overhead.
But then, that hadn’t bothered him, the captain, as much before as he thought it should have. A better subject was needed, though Barlennan had never heard of guinea pigs.
“Sherrer! Come aboard.”
“Yes, Captain.” If the sailor were uneasy, his voice failed to betray the fact. He came over the side in a few seconds, presumably coiling his safety line as he came.
“Here, sir.”
“Can you think of any way back?”
“No, sir. We’re—we’re underneath—” The voice trembled.
“Don’t be ashamed of being scared. It would probably mean something worse if you weren’t. Did you feel better while you were working just now?”
“Yes, Captain.”
“Feel the piece of sail cloth I’m holding here.”
“I have it, sir.”
“Put it over your head and eyes, like this.” Barlennan helped. “Find some thin line and tie it there. Then go back overboard, and check the bottom all around us for small rocks. I think we can use some—as many as you can find.”
Sherrer was neither stupid nor unimaginative, but was not the sort to ask anything like “How?” to an order. He simply obeyed. Barlennan was satisfied. He didn’t want rocks, he wanted information, and would have had a hard time in answering a “how” or a “why” just then. The Flyers had not taught him any psychology, but his profession had; and he had grasped certain principles of research—not as well as his mate, but better than vaguely. Sherrer obviously shouldn’t know in advance what was expected—or rather, hoped. Let him look for rocks for half a day or so, and then come aboard with them, and give him something else to do with the hood still over his eyes. Something not too demanding of his attention—
But how about Barlennan’s own attention? Captain or not, there were moments when the tonnage above seemed to fill his mind. There was nothing else to think of. Nothing else in the world. Maybe he’d better make another hood for himself.
No. He was the captain, and he knew what was up there. If anyone could ignore it without special help, he should be the one.
Of course, it would be nice if something else were to get his attention away from the World Above.
It was, indeed, a relief when something did.
Jeanette had spent several minutes calling Barlennan after his communicator had gone silent and dark. She had his verbal reports up to that time, and wasn’t very hopeful after it; the fadeout hadn’t been quite instantaneous. The drifters hadn’t hit anything hard and suddenly, up to the time sound and picture had faded. The waves the communicators used were long enough to reach their goal by diffraction even when Toorey was on the far side of the cliff from the Bree’s crew, so the basket must have been pretty well surrounded by some obstacle within a second or two after that. Barlennan had reported that the methane was flowing into openings in the rockfall; she had seen this, as well.
And Jeanette had as clear an idea as any human being possibly could of what being inside a cave or a tunnel at “normal” gravity must mean to a Mesklinite.
She switched to Dondragmer’s set at once. He also had heard his captain’s messages, delayed barely a second by the round trip to Toorey, and had as clear an idea as the Flyer of what had happened. Some of his sailors had already been ordered downstream to investigate the end of the rockfall; after a moment’s thought, he let them go on. He split the remainder into two groups, sending one up toward the point where the eddy had presumably caused all the trouble and keeping the rest with him to get as close as possible as quickly as possible to where he was now pretty sure the original Bree was stranded.
The stream had started to widen now as the captain had reported earlier from his upstream position, but the methane at the edge away from the plateau was not uncomfortably warm. Maybe they could reach the ship, or what they hoped was the ship, without getting scalded. The mate told the Flyers what he was doing, and led the way. The river was widening, its edge coming to meet them. The radio remained behind; swimming with it was not an option, and walking on the bottom with it seemed inadvisable. Whoever carried it would be able to talk to the others and report to Toorey, but its viewing equipment would be useless unless it could be held above the surface. It seemed better to learn what could be found out, and then come back for the communicator. No one on the moon was pleased, but no one argued.
The bottom was ordinary ground at first. It had been dry land since long before the Bree’s arrival, presumably; the liquid methane was spreading wider and wider past its former bank, and there had been little change in the volume of flow in the thousands of days since their first arrival. There was presumably little change now; the overflow represented liquid displaced from i
ts former bed by rock.
The crew waded for a while, then had to swim, watching where they were headed part of the time but checking below the surface frequently. They were something like half way to where the ship seemed to be when the bottom began to show lighter in color, and closer examination showed that it was now the same ammonia slush reported earlier by the captain’s quartet. It was being washed downstream, they could see at first; then it covered the bottom with a uniform sheet of white, and its motion couldn’t be seen. Physical contact indicated that it was still moving.
The methane was getting deeper, and Dondragmer kept a close eye on what he was now almost certain was the Bree. It had been hauled well ashore, but was now out in the stream—or rather, the stream had spread well past it. It would have to be floating soon. Perhaps it was floating now, the mate realized; they were all swimming, and would be carried downstream at the same rate, and the slope across the river was completely hidden by fog, so it was not easy to tell who or what was moving.
It was the ship. It was afloat. It was easy to reach, fortunately; but it was not merely drifting along with the swimmers. The wind was toward the rock fall here, too, and the Bree was being carried very slowly toward the slope as the balloon basket had done.
For just a moment the mate thought of making sail; then he realized that the wind was toward the rocks and the depth too shallow to lower centerboards and sail effectively across it. With only ten men aboard, rowing would be futile.
Almost futile. Maybe they could keep her away from the rocks long enough to get the radio back aboard—no, they were already leaving that equipment upstream. Dondragmer ordered four of his crew back overboard.
“Get the radio, and start taking it downstream. We’re not very far from the end of the rock fall, now; maybe when we get there the heat will ease off and the wind change. If it doesn’t, well, the ship’s a lot bigger than the balloon basket, and we may be able to paddle it so the rafts catch in a space too narrow to let us through.”
The crewmen obeyed. One of those remaining behind raised another point.
“Will the rafts hold together if we catch her across a passage that way?”
“I don’t know. Do any extra lashing you can between the outboard rafts before we hit. There aren’t enough of us to keep her off, we’ll soon be in the fog, and it can’t be far from there to the rocks—it seems to be formed by methane hitting them and boiling. I’m surprised the wind doesn’t let us see the edge of the fall; the captain could, further up.”
The ship had enough cordage to keep them all busy for the next few minutes. The mate saw his swimming party reach shore and head back upstream to where he could still see the communicator. The downstream party was still in sight as well. The river seemed to be growing even wider there, but its members were staying ashore for faster travel.
The mate had time to think as he lashed. His thoughts rather paralleled the captain’s; where did all this methane come from? Unlike Barlennan, he came up with a plausible explanation.
The original river had been fairly deep. If it had been well filled with fallen rock, it would have to spread over more ground, or travel faster, or both. But this idea, as the Flyers had often warned was likely to be the case, gave rise to more questions.
If the methane were being displaced by the rocks, why was it flowing toward them? There was at the moment no way to ask the customers and, of course, no certainty that they would be able to answer. He would have to do more thinking himself.
And just now there was no time to do that. They were into the fog.
Dondragmer silently berated himself for leaving to chance something he might have controlled. Even the few men now on board could have paddled to turn the cluster of rafts so that its longer side was toward the rocks, and thus improve its chance of catching rather than being swept between rocks and out of daylight and under—
He hadn’t been thinking of under. Deliberately.
Luck had been with them, as it turned out, but the mate still felt stupid. They didn’t touch sidewise, but the starboard bow raft of the cluster hit first on a rock barely above the surface. The after portion swung counterclockwise as the current kept pushing inward. The aft starboard raft struck, harder than anyone liked, on a huge slab which tilted up out of sight in the fog. The midships section continued to push shoreward briefly, but one aspect of the ship’s basic design proved its salvation. Ropes stretched, rafts along the starboard side heaved, and the Bree came to rest with bow and stern pressed firmly against equally firm rocks and with another fragment of the fall under her just forward of amidships. While the rocks stayed there, so would the Bree. At the moment, with the darkness farther in easily visible even with the fog, this was a relief.
Dondragmer gave no one time to think. He ordered one of the men overboard with the longest light line aboard.
“Bend this around you. We’ll fasten the other end to the ship. Get to the bottom and start shoreward, taking the line with you. Try not to get washed downstream. If you run out of line before you reach shore—you probably will—surface and try to spot landmarks which will let you know where you are and how far downstream we’ve traveled. Then do your best to keep there and yell for the others. We should still be in hearing for them. If you make contact, tell them to bring the radio as close to this place as they can.”
“All right,” the sailor affirmed, “but couldn’t someone start calling from where we are? Then they could be looking for me and have the spot marked a lot better when they see me.”
“Good. Right. We’ll do that. Over with you; they’ll still have to see you; they certainly won’t see us.”
The crewman vanished with no more words.
The line paid out slowly, occasionally going slack for a moment. Dondragmer suspected that the sailor was occasionally losing contact with the bottom, a forgivable offense since the Mesklinite body averaged just barely denser than liquid methane and there was certainly a current. He didn’t want to ask, since one of his other men was, in response to orders, hooting as loudly as he could to get the attention of the downstream party. The mate concentrated on keeping track of the length of line paid out.
This eventually reached its end. Rather than have it jerked from his grip and possibly even from the rail to which it had been secured, the mate tightened his own grip and began gently tugging as the end approached. An answering set of tugs came almost at once, and the sailor’s voice was audible between the bellows from the Bree’s deck.
“Located, sir. I’m only about a hundred lengths or a little more from shore. I’m off the slush, and there’s plant stuff here I could tie the line to, but I want to make sure it’s solid first.”
“Right. Carry on. I’m sure you can hear Felmethes calling. Can you see the others? Can you tell whether they hear him?”
“Can’t see them, sir, but I think I can hear them. Can’t you?” Dondragmer gestured to Felmethes to be silent for a moment. The fellow had, of course, been pausing to listen for answers at regular intervals, but was glad enough to wait a little longer.
After a few seconds a long roar that seemed like a Mesklinite voice was audible, but no words could be distinguished. The sound ended eventually, and Dondragmer called to Kentherrer at the other end of the line.
“Could you hear that? Could you understand them?”
“Yes, sir. They keep asking if it’s you, and say they can’t understand you. There must be something about echoes along the rock faces.”
“Could be. See if you can make them understand you. If so, tell them what’s happened, and have them come back here.”
A perfectly comprehensible pattern of hoots in Kentherrer’s voice was the response; evidently he was more or less in touch with the other party but having trouble with clear communication. Dondragmer was patient. He was not exactly worried about the captain; there was very little hope that he and his fellows were alive, and rather less that they were sane. It was better not to rush into anything until there was at least a vagu
e idea of where to rush.
Besides, it was not likely that anything at all could be done about the missing balloonists until the Bree could be brought ashore and rigged again. Even then, it was far from clear just what could be done. The most obvious technique, searching among and under the fallen rocks, was unpromising even if there were some way of telling where to start the search.
Come to think of it, there was a way for that. Barlennan had described in a good deal of detail the area downstream from the point where the eddy started. The point should still be there, and maybe even the eddy. If necessary, they could leave the ship where she was and search as a climbing or a swimming parry.
Under the rocks? Well, maybe.
Kentherrer’s voice had faded, but could still just barely be heard. The party must be coming back. It seemed to the mate better to wait until they arrived, rather than attempt a three-cornered conversation through the echoes.
He felt just a little foolish when Felmethes went overboard and began talking in an ordinary voice, submerged, first to Kentherrer and then, only a little louder, to the downstream party. He hadn’t heard, or at least distinguished, the message from the latter saying that they were going to submerge; but that, by his standards, was no excuse for not remembering that words could be made out much farther in methane than in air.
He had had no experience with complex echoes under the surface, and it would be a long time before he knew about the speed/wavelength relation and such phenomena as diffraction, but Dondragmer went overboard anyway, and listened to the conversation for a moment. The downstream party was indeed on the way back. He joined in loudly.
The group had made out and acknowledged his order to get the communicator. Then another pattern of hoots, as blurred and devoid of meaning as the first sounds in air along the rocks, interfered with the conversation.
Words were indistinguishable. So were individual voice patterns. But the one other party under Dondragmer’s orders should be on land, and a quick flow to the Bree’s deck and back into the methane—Mesklinite hearing was not confined to any one part of the body surface—made it obvious that this noise too was originating in liquid. The same body of liquid which was flowing along the face of the rock fall.