The Planet Explorer

by Murray Leinster

  Bordman told him. The telling required eighteen words.

  “Of course,” he added, “we picked a day when there was a strong wind from the right quarter."

  Sandringham stared at him. Then he said:

  “But how does that apply here? It was sound enough, though I'd never have thought of it. But what's it got to do with the situation here?"

  “This swamp, you might say,” said Bordman, “is underground. But there's forty feet, on an average, of soil on top."

  He explained what difference that made. It took his three sentences to make the difference clear.

  Sandringham leaned back in his chair. Bordman scratched the dog, somewhat embarrassed. Sandringham thought.

  “I do not see any possible chance,” said Sandringham distastefully, “of doing it any other way. I would never have thought of that! But I'm taking part of the job out of your hands, Bordman."

  Bordman said nothing. He waited.

  “Because,” said Sandringham, “you're not the man to put over to the civilians what they must believe. You're not impressive. I know you, and I know you're a good man in a pinch. But this pinch needs a salesman. So I'm going to have Werner make the—er—pitch to the planetary government. Results are more important than justice, so Werner will front this affair."

  Bordman winced a little. But Sandringham was right. He didn't know how to be impressive. He could not speak with pompous conviction, which is so much more convincing than reason to most people. He wasn't the man to get the cooperation of the non-Service population, because he could only explain what he knew and believed, and was not practiced in persuasion. But Werner was. He had the knack of making people believe anything not because it was reasonable but because it was oratory.

  “I suppose you're right,” acknowledged Bordman. “We need civilian help and a lot of it. I'm not the man to get it. He is.” He did not say anything about Werner being the man to get credit, whether he deserved it or not. He patted the dog's head and stood up. “I wish I had a good supply of soil-coagulant. I need to make a coffer-dam in the reserve area here. But I think I'll manage."

  Sandringham regarded him soberly as he moved to the door. As he was about to pass out of it, Sandringham said:

  “Bordman—"

  “What?"

  “Take good care of yourself. Will you?"

  * * * *

  Therefore Senior Officer Werner, of the Council Survey, received his instructions from Sandringham. Bordman never knew the details of the instructions Werner got. They were possibly persuasive, or they may have been menacing. But Werner ceased to argue for the movement of any fraction of the island's population to the arctic ice-cap, and instead made frequent eloquent addresses to the planetary population on the scientific means by which their lives were to be saved. Between the addresses, perhaps, he sweated cold sweat when a tree sedately tilted in what had seemed solid soil, or a building settled perceptibly while he looked at it, or when a section of the island's soil bulged upward.

  Instead, he headed citizens’ committees, and grandly gave instructions, and spoke in unintelligible and therefore extremely scientific terms when desperately earnest men asked for explanations. But he was perfectly clear in what he wanted them to do.

  He wanted drill-holes in the arable soil down to the depth at which the holes began to close up of themselves. He wanted those holes not more than a hundred feet apart in lines which slanted at a little less than forty-five degrees to the gradient of the bedrock.

  Sandringham checked his speeches, at the rate of four a day. Once he had Bordman called away from where he supervised some improbable operations. Bordman was smeared with the island's grayish mud when he looked into the phone-plate to take the call.

  “Bordman,” said Sandringham curtly. “Werner's saying those holes you want are to be in lines exactly forty-five degrees to the gradient."

  “That—I'd like a little less,” said Bordman. “If they slanted three miles across the grade for every two downhill, it would be better. I'd like to put a lot more lines of holes. But there's the element of time."

  “I'll have to explain that he was misquoted,” said Sandringham, grimly. “Three across to two down. How close do you really want those lines?"

  “As close as possible,” said Bordman. “But I've got to have them quickly. How does the barometer look?"

  “Down a tenth,” said Sandringham.

  Bordman said:

  “Damn! Has he got plenty of labor?"

  “All the labor there is,” said Sandringham. “And I'm having a road laid along the cliffs for speed with the trucks. If I dared—and if I had the pipe—I'd lay a pipe-line."

  “Later,” said Bordman tiredly. “If he's got labor to spare, set them to work turning the irrigation systems hind part before. Make them drainage systems. Use pumps. So if rain does come it won't be spread out on the land by all the pretty ditches. So it will be gathered instead of either flung back over the cliffs or else drained downhill without getting a chance to sink into the ground. For the time being, anyhow."

  Sandringham said:

  “Has it occurred to you what a good, pounding rain would do to Headquarters, and consequently to public confidence on this island, and therefore to the attempt of anybody to do anything but wring his hands because he was doomed?"

  Bordman grimaced.

  “I'm irrigating, here. I've got a small-sized lake made, and an ice coffer-dam, and the water-freshener is working around the clock. If there is labor, tell ‘em to fix the irrigation systems into draining layouts. That'd cheer them, anyhow."

  He was very weary. There is a certain exhausting quality in the need to tell other men to do work which may cause them to be killed. The fact that one would certainly be killed with them did not lessen the tension.

  He went back to his work. And it definitely seemed to be as purposeless as any man's work could possibly be. Down-grade from the now thoroughly deserted area in which ship-fuel tanks had leaked—quite far down-grade—he had commandeered all the refrigeration equipment in the warehouses. Since refrigeration was necessary for fuel-storage, there was a great deal. He had planted iron pipes in the soil, and circulated refrigerant in it. Presently there was a wall of solidly frozen soil which was shaped like a hollow U. In the curved part of that U he'd siphoned out a lake. A peristaltic pump ran seawater from the island's lee out upon the ground—where it instantly turned to mud—and another peristaltic pump sucked the mud up again and delivered it down-grade beyond the line of freezing-pipes. It was in fact a system of hydraulic dredging such as is normally performed in rivers and harbors. But when top-soil is merely former abyssal mud it is an excellent way to move dirt. Also, it does not require anybody to strike blows into soil which may be explosive when one has gotten down near bedrock, and in particular there are no clanking machines.

  But it was hair-raising.

  In one day, though, he had a sizeable lake pumped out. And he pumped it out to emptiness, smelling the water as it went down to a greater depth below the previous ground surface. At the end of the day he shivered and ordered pumping ended for the time.

  Then he had a brine-pipe laid around a great circuit, to the Headquarters ground which was up-grade from the now-deserted square mile or so in which the fuel-tanks lay deep in the soil. And here, also, he performed excavation without the sound of hammer, shovel, or pick. He thrust pipes into the ground, and they had nozzles at the end which threw part of the water backward. So that when seawater poured into them it thrust them deeper into the ground by the backward jet action. Again the fact that the soil was abyssal mud made it possible. The nozzles floated up much grayish mud, but they bored ahead down to bed-rock, and there they lay flat and tunneled to one side and the other, the tunnels they made being full of water at all times.

  From those tunnels, as they extended, an astonishing amount of seawater seeped out into the soil near bedrock. But it was seawater. It was heavily mineralized. It is a peculiarity of seawater that it is an elec
trolyte, and it is a property of electrolytes that they coagulate colloids, and discourage the suspension of small solid particles which are on the borderline of being colloids. In fact, the water of the ocean of Canna III turned the ground-soil into good, honest mud which did not feel at all soapy, and through which it percolated with a surprising readiness.

  Young Barnes supervised this part of the operation, once it was begun. He shamed the Survey personnel assigned to him into perhaps excessive self-confidence.

  “He knows what he's doing,” he said firmly. “Look here! I'll take that canteen. It's fresh water. Here's some soap. Wet it in fresh water and it lathers. See? It dissolves. Now try to dissolve it in seawater! Try it! See? They put salt in the boiled stuff to separate the soap out, when they make it!” He picked up that item from Bordman. “Seawater won't soften the ground. It can't! Come on, now, let's get another pipe putting more salt water underground!"

  His workmen did not understand what he was doing, but they labored willingly because it was for a purpose.... And downhill, in the hydraulic-dredged-out lake, water came seeping in, in the form of mud. And another pipe came up from the seashore. It was a rather small pipe, and the personnel who laid it were bewildered. Because there was a water-freshening plant down there and all the fresh water was poured back overboard, while the brine, saturated with salts from the ocean, unable to dissolve a single grain of anything, was being used to fill the small artificial lake.

  The second day Sandringham called Bordman again, and again Bordman peered wearily into the phone-screen.

  “Yes,” said Bordman. “The leaked fuel is turning up. In solution. I'm trying to measure the concentration by matching specific gravities of lake-water and brine, and then sticking electrodes in each. The fuel's corrosive as the devil. It gives a different EMF. Higher than brine of the same density. I think I've got it in hand."

  “Do you want to start shipping it?” demanded Sandringham.

  “You can begin pouring it down the holes,” said Bordman. “How's the barometer?"

  “Down three-tenths this morning. Steady now."

  “Damn!” said Bordman. “I'll set up moulds. Freeze it in plastic bags the size of bore-holes so it will go down. While it's frozen they can even push it down deep."

  Sandringham said grimly:

  “There's been more damned technical work done with ship-fuel than any other substance since time began. But remember that the stuff can still be set off, even dissolved in water! Its sensitivity goes down, but it's not gone!"

  “If it were,” said Bordman drearily, “you could invite in the civilian population to sit on its rump. I've got something like forty tons of ship-fuel in brine solution in this lake I pumped out! But it's in five thousand tons of brine. We don't speak above a whisper when we're around it. We walk in carpet-slippers and you never saw people so polite! We'll start freezing it."

  “How can you handle it?” demanded Sandringham apprehensively.

  “The brine freezes at minus thirty,” said Bordman. “In one percent solution it's only five percent sensitive at minus nineteen. We're handling it at minus nineteen. I think I'll step up the brine and chill it a little more."

  He waved a mud-smeared hand and went away.

  That day, bolster-trucks began to roll out of Survey Headquarters. They rolled very smoothly, and they trailed a fog of chilled air behind them. And presently there were men with heavy gloves on their hands taking long things like sausages out of the bolster-trucks and untying the ends and lowering them down into holes bored in the topsoil until they reached places where wetness made the holes close up again. Then the men from Survey pushed those frozen sausages underground still further by long poles with carefully padded—and refrigerated ends. And then they went on to other holes.

  The first day there were five hundred such sausages thrust down into holes in the ground, which holes to all intents and purposes closed up behind them. The second day there were four thousand. The third day there were eight. On the fourth the solution of ship-fuel in brine in the lake was so thin that it did not give enough EMF in the little battery-cell to show how much corrosive substance there was in the brine. It was not mud any longer. Brine flowed at the top of bedrock, and it left the mud behind it, because salt water hindered the suspension of former globigerinous ooze particles. It was practically colloid. Saltwater almost coagulated it.

  The brine flowing from the saltwater tunnels upwind showed no more ship-fuel in it. Bordman called Sandringham and told him.

  “I can call in the civilians,” said Sandringham. “You've mopped up the leaked stuff! It couldn't have been done—"

  “Not anywhere but here with bedrock handy just underneath and slanting,” admitted Bordman. “Tell them they can come if they want to. They'll sort of drift in. I want to top some more ship-fuel for the rest of those bore-holes."

  Sandringham hesitated.

  “Twenty thousand holes,” said Bordman tiredly. “Each one had a six-hundred pound block of frozen saturated brine dumped in it with roughly a pound of ship-fuel in solution. We've gone that far. Might as well go the rest of the way. How's the barometer?"

  “Up a tenth,” said Sandringham. “Still rising."

  Bordman blinked at him, because he had trouble keeping his eyes open.

  “Let's ride it, Sandringham!"

  Sandringham hesitated. Then he said:

  “Go ahead."

  Bordman waved his arms at his associates, whom he admired with great fervor in his then-foggy mind, because they were always ready to work when it was needed, and it had not stopped being needed for five days running. He explained that there was only three more miles of holes to be filled up, and therefore they would just draw so much of ship-fuel and blend it carefully with an appropriate amount of chilled brine and then freeze it in appropriate sausages....

  Young Lieutenant Barnes said:

  “Yes, sir. I'll take care of it."

  Bordman said:

  “Barometer's up a tenth.” His eyes did not quite focus. “All right, Lieutenant. Go ahead. Promising young officer. Excellent. I'll sit down here for just a moment."

  When Barnes came back, Bordman was asleep. And a last one hundred and fifty frozen sausages of brine and ship-fuel went out of Headquarters within a matter of hours. Then a vast quietude settled down everywhere.

  Young Barnes sat beside Bordman, menacing anybody who even thought of disturbing him. When Sandringham called for him Barnes went to the phone-plate.

  “Sir,” he said with vast formality. “Mr. Bordman went five days without sleep. His job's done. I won't wake him, sir!"

  Sandringham raised an eyebrow.

  “You won't?"

  “I won't, sir!” said young Barnes.

  Sandringham nodded.

  “Fortunately,” he observed, “nobody's listening. You are quite right."

  He snapped the connection. And then young Barnes realized that he had defied a Sector Chief, which is something distinctly more improper in a junior officer than merely trying to instruct him in topping off his vacuum-suit tanks.

  Twelve hours later, however, Sandringham called for him.

  “Barometer's dropping, Lieutenant. I'm concerned. I'm issuing a notice of the impending storm. Not everybody will crowd in on us, but a great many will. I'm explaining that the chemicals put into the bottom soil may not quite have finished their work. If Bordman wakens, tell him."

  “Yes, sir,” said Barnes.

  But he did not intend to wake Bordman. Bordman, however, woke of himself at the end of twenty hours of sleep. He was still and sore and his mouth tasted as if something had kittened in it. Fatigue can produce a hangover, too.

  “How's the barometer?” he asked when his eyes came open.

  “Dropping, sir. Heavy winds. The Sector Chief has opened the Reserve Area to the civilians if they wish to come."

  Bordman computed dizzily on his fingers. A more complex instrument was actually needed, of course. One does not calculate on one's f
ingers just how long a one percent dilute solution of ship-fuel in frozen brine has taken to melt, and how completely it has diffused through an upside-down swamp with the pressure of forty feet of soil on top of it, and therefore its effective concentration and dispersal underground.

  “I think,” said Bordman, “it's all right. By the way, did they turn the irrigation system hind end to?"

  Young Barnes did not know what this was all about. He had to send for information. Meanwhile he solicitously plied Bordman with coffee and food. Bordman grew reflective.

  “Queer,” he said. “You think of the damage leaked ship-fuel can do. Setting off the rest of the stone and all. Even by itself it rates some thousands of tons of TNT. I wonder what TNT was, before it became a ton-measure of energy? You think of it exploding in one place, and it's appalling! But think of all that same amount of energy applied to square miles of upside-down swamp. Hundreds or thousands of miles of upside-down swamp. D'you know, Lieutenant, on Soris II we pumped a ship-fuel solution onto a swamp we wanted to drain? Flooded it, and let it soak until a day came with a nice, strong, steady wind."

  “Yes, sir,” said Barnes respectfully.

  “Then we detonated it. We didn't have a one percent solution. It was more like a thousandth of one percent solution. Nobody's ever measured the speed of propagation of an explosion of ship-fuel, dry. But it's been measured in dilute solution. It isn't the speed of sound. It's lower. It's purely a temperature-phenomenon. In water, at any dilution, ship-fuel goes off just barely below the boiling point of water. It doesn't detonate from shock when it's diluted enough to be ionized, but that takes a hell of a lot of dilution. Have you got some more coffee?"

  “Yes, sir,” said Barnes. “Coming up."

  “We floated ship-fuel solution over that swamp, Barnes, and let it stand. It has a high diffusion-rate. It went down into the mud ... And there came a day when the wind was right. I dumped a red-hot iron into the swamp-water that had ship-fuel in solution. It was the damndest sight you ever saw!"

  Barnes served him more coffee. Bordman sipped it, and it burned his tongue.