Noise

by Hal Clement

  There was another long wait. Then Wanaka came on deck followed a few minutes later by the other two; Keokolo had apparently gone to fetch ’Ao. All flipped their helmets back, and the child headed for the cabin.

  “She showed me a couple of really tiny dents near the port bow,” the man said. “I guess we did bump a coral or something, but whatever it was doesn’t seem to have gone through the outer coat. We might as well get going again.”

  “Right. I’ll take it. You eat and top off your breathers.” Wanaka reached for the tiller, then looked at Mike and smiled briefly. “See how close to best speed you can bring her.”

  The sailing lesson for the next hour was also a language one for Hoani; he had known little of proper sailing terminology even in his native tongue. As usual, they didn’t care much just which way they were going; Mike had tried in conversation a dozen different words for “map” or “chart” in various parts of the South Pacific and found that they either meant something like “picture” or nothing at all, usually the latter.

  ’Ao eventually reappeared and climbed to her masthead, but had nothing to report for a long time. It was Keokolo who finally came on deck with a puzzled expression visible around his breathing mask, looked around carefully, made his way to the after hatch of the port hull, and descended through it. He reappeared in seconds.

  “Captain! Heave to! Bilges up!”

  Wanaka seized the tiller, though Mike had already started to shift it in the right direction, and in moments Malolo, her way gone, was rocking as nearly motionless as anything could on the restless water. “’Ao!” called the captain. “Get down and check the starboard bilges. Hohoro!”

  As the child reached the deck, touching only two rungs on the way down, hail began to drift down around them and she turned toward the water sheet, but the captain shouted again and gestured toward the hatch. “Water’s important, but so is staying on top of it! Check that hull first! Tere! Oi’oi!” ’Ao obeyed. She was gone longer than Keo had been, but was shrugging as she emerged.

  “All right on this side.” She seemed calmer, but scurried toward the collecting equipment at top speed. She slipped once on the now hailstone-covered deck and started to snap on her helmet even before trying to stop the skid, but Mike was in a good position and seized her arm before she went overside. He held her until she recovered her footing. Without a glance or word of thanks she resumed her way, and began shoveling hailstones into the drinking breakers. Wanaka gestured Mike to the tiller, and headed for the hatch where Keo had disappeared. Before she reached it, he emerged again, and with the single word “Leaks!” went overside. He was gone for less than a minute. He had his helmet off before actually reaching the deck, and practically bellowed, “Oxygen!”

  III

  Score

  “’Ao, take the tiller—no, let it swing and drop the sails. Mike, we need your muscle. Get as much cargo as you can out of the port hull and into the other. Never mind about nice stowing, we can see to that later. Keo, any food, air, and water equipment not in the cabin to the starboard hull, except the kumu’rau. At least it’s not out; make certain it’s secure. I’ll cut rigging and unclip the deck as fast as I can. If I’m not done when you’ve finished the life-stuff, then help me. Tere!”

  Hoani quickly saw another reason why they had been so quick loading up with iron in spite of its density, and how Wanaka had kept busy between emptying buckets. Each purse of metal dust was now clipped to a balloonlike float whose volume sharply limited the space for actual cargo. None of these items was heavy and he thought he could fill the other hull quickly, but when he tried to carry several purses at once Wanaka cautioned him about the fragility of the floats.

  Hence, a lot of cargo was still untouched when the gunwale of the port hull dipped below the surface. Mike thought of closing the hatches to delay flooding, but before he could make the suggestion the captain must have guessed his thought. She shook her head negatively.

  There were readable expressions on the four faces as their owners watched the port hull of the Malolo be pushed slightly below the surface by the still attached deck, but it was only annoyance. Showing fear or anger in public, even if the public were mate or sibling, was rude on Kainui, and so far neither of the informed adults felt any real fear. Mike wasn’t sure whether he should, but decided to be guided by them. The youngest member of the group might have been slightly afraid or even terrified, but was not going to let anyone else know it.

  The fact that neither ship nor city could be seen within the haze-limited vision in any direction surprised no one, and of course Mike, the only one who had ever seen land, knew better than to expect that anywhere on this world.

  The swell was high, but its wavelength was great, far longer than the catamaran’s hulls; almost too long, just now, to let anyone see one crest from the next through the haze. In the water world’s gravity, waves moved so slowly that the five-meter rise and fall of the drifting wreck was not noticeable—would, indeed, have been fairly hard to measure.

  “Keo. Take over from Mike. Free as much cargo as you can. I’ll take the deck clips. ’Ao, salvage any stowed line from the lockers first, then get the sails. Don’t waste time with knots. Cut the lines, but be careful of veins and valves. We don’t know when or how fast or even whether that hull will go down. Mike, stay with me, and provide any muscle help I seem to need. If I’m under water and can’t talk, use your eyes and head.”

  There was no argument. Keokolo was seven Kainui years older than Wanaka, nearly twenty centimeters taller, fifteen kilograms more massive, and her husband; but her seamanship rating predated his by over two years. This would automatically put her in charge in any outcity emergency even if she had not been the registered owner and commander of the Malolo. Also, shifting cargo that was already under water, even cargo packed to float, would call for muscle; she had divided the duties sensibly. Keo nodded, donned helmet, and slid into the sea.

  ’Ao did the same, swimming to one of the forward lockers of the awash hull and cautiously releasing its latch. Wanaka watched the child for a few seconds, decided she would need no help and was unlikely to panic, and turned back to her own task of freeing the quick-disconnects that attached the deck to the starboard hull. The latter was listing dangerously as its twin dragged it downward; the crew had already been forced from deck to coaming. If its gunwale dipped under, the commander’s hope of salvaging any significant part of her cargo would sink with it.

  She was not greatly worried about having to drift for a year or two, but she valued both the metal and her self-respect. Also, if they were rescued before chancing in sight of a city, the rescuers would be entitled to much of the cargo.

  Two minutes’ work freed the starboard hull from its dangerous burden. The deck slid off, or the hull went out from under it—none of the workers bothered to decide which; the important point was that the long, slender structure righted itself before going gunwale under, and crew and cargo still had something presumably navigable to ride. Mike followed Wanaka below the surface.

  Keo was still engaged with the cargo lashings of the sinking hull; package after bubble-floated package of iron dust was being freed and rising slowly toward the surface. ’Ao had apparently finished the coils of rope in the lockers with commendable speed and was now slashing rigging lines from the mast and yard, obeying the order not to waste time with knots. Also commendably, she was looking around continually, and saw the captain’s approach.

  “How much ready cord did you get?” Wanaka gestured as she swam toward the child.

  “There were ten eighty-meter coils of tow line, and four two-hundred-meter drums of rigging cord,” she replied promptly.

  “Did you stow them?”

  “No. They’re floating. I thought I’d better get to the sails in case they got pulled too deep when the hull sank.”

  “Good. The metal is most important now, though. I’ll help Keo with that, and you join us when you get the sails aboard. We’ll stay on the starboard hull unle
ss and until the port one actually does sink. Then we’ll string and tow everything we’ve saved—the starboard hull is pretty full. We’ll hope the weather stays calm long enough to get things roped together and at least start the growing. Come on.”

  The weather obliged, though the suns were quite low when the job ended and work had been slow during the eclipse. ’Ao finished her last knot, dived, and swam back to the nearly awash hull to examine the ulcers near its bow.

  The captain tapped her as firmly on the shoulder as the water allowed, and signaled sharply. “Keep away from that! You can see what it did to my ship! Do you want the same thing to happen to your suit?”

  “But my suit isn’t made of the same stuff. Whatever this is shouldn’t infect it.”

  Wanaka’s gesture was not a word symbol. She pulled the child toward her, spun the small body to face away from her, and did something to the twenty-centimeter disk between ’Ao’s shoulders. Mike noticed that no tools were needed this time. ’Ao tried vainly to pull away, but the captain maintained her hold and finished what she was doing. A moment later the adults were stroking slowly back toward the intact hull while the smaller figure swam furiously ahead of them.

  By the time the older ones broke the surface, their charge was aboard, sitting hunched up in the stern looking away from them.

  “’Ao. We still have to string bags. We can’t keep all this stuff aboard.” Keo spoke, judging that she was more likely to listen to him at the moment; he didn’t know the details of the under water exchange, but could guess closely enough.

  “String them yourself. You don’t want me to help. Wanaka took points off me just for arguing, and I have a right to argue if you don’t explain why you—”

  “It wasn’t for arguing—” the captain interrupted. “It was for ignoring a warning. You stayed right beside that infected spot while you argued. I know your suit is made of something different from the hull—of course it is. The two hulls are made of different materials and have different coatings for the same reason.”

  “I know. I was going to remind you.”

  “Did you know that the hull we’ve just lost had four protective layers, all of different composition, and that all have been penetrated? Do you know anything at all about oxygen gangrene?”

  ’Ao turned sharply. Her tear-stained face could be seen around her mask, along with its expression of surprise. “No! I—well—I—”

  Keo, too tactful or too kindhearted to force an apology, answered her. “I’m sorry no one told you that, but you did know water was getting in. Don’t worry; you can earn the points back. We’ll be a long, long time getting home. Half a year, I wouldn’t wonder, maybe a lot longer. There’ll be plenty of time for you to do it.”

  All three looked up at the setting suns. Pahi, the brighter, was above and somewhat to the left of its slightly cooler and fainter twin. There was no overlap just now, but all three knew that Pale was slightly closer to them at the moment. No one really cared yet; such details as eclipse phenomena were important only during the final and most precise stages of a navigation problem. All but the least sea-oriented residents of Kainui, however, tended to keep aware of the general celestial status.

  ’Ao, without another word, went to the nearest hatch, took a coil of tow line, and began tying together the float-equipped sacks of iron dust and letting them go overboard. Keo finished climbing out of the water and stood as tall as he could, looking around to see whether any of the salvaged material had been missed and not yet moored. Some had, so he, too, plunged back in. Taking a coil of the light line the child had salvaged, he made his way to the farthest of the bags, and began methodically making crochet loops in his cord and tightening them around the prongs with which each float was provided.

  Several times he returned to what was left of the Malolo to recheck his view from as high as possible, while ’Ao sat where she was and turned cargo into towage. The starboard hull was already too full, and none of the most recently salvaged material could be kept on board. Any ordinary rain-or-hail storm could drop the ocean’s surface density enough to let the craft settle dangerously with its present burden; at this latitude—Malolo had shifted to an almost southward course after leaving the copper-fish—even the poleward-eastward relatively fresh surface current from the equatorial rain belt had picked up a fair amount of salt and could be diluted significantly by precipitation.

  Rising wind interfered with the last part of the operation, but they lost no bags, to the captain’s satisfaction. Everything they could find and catch had been secured, and the second stage of their problem could be faced.

  Navigation on Kainui was complicated by the world’s having no fixed reference points other than the rotation poles, which were too abstract to be found without rather complex celestial observation and much too far from where Malolo was now to be useful. Muamoku, the floating city that was their home port and nominal eventual goal, did not remain in one spot, though like the other cities it maintained latitude fairly well. No one really cared; as far as anyone knew, every part of the planet was like every other part except for current patterns, surface salinity, and coverage of floe ice. These varied with latitude, with minor statistical differences in frequency and intensity of storms, and with the percentage of ocean locally filmed over by fresh water or ice. There were no natural icebergs, since there were no islands or continents to build successive snowfalls up into glaciers. Even the surface water was extremely salty in many places and hence hard to freeze, but Kainui and its slightly smaller twin Kaihapa were far enough from the suns to freeze plenty of floe ice in the high latitudes in the winter hemisphere.

  There had been attempts in the distant past to harvest ice from the southern cap and supply water that didn’t need desalting, but unfamiliar conditions at the polar region seemed to have caused the disappearance of too many of the ships involved.

  “All right, ’Ao, what do we do with the sails now that the mast can’t be used?” Wanaka felt that she had been a little severe with her punishment and hoped that the youngster could earn the lost points back quickly. She had no intention, of course, of broadcasting her doubts by canceling or reducing the penalty.

  “We use them as sea anchors under water. The wind won’t help anymore. Muamoku tries to stay at the south edge of the southern trades, and I don’t really know even that much about any other cities. We’ll have to rig a sea anchor and sink it far enough for deep flow to keep the surface current from taking us too far south. Then we can start—”

  “How do we know the right latitude?”

  The visible part of the child’s face showed she had spotted the trap. “We don’t need to. It doesn’t matter as long as we don’t get too near the ice. The suns will warn us of that, and I think we can check stars, too, but I expect you’ll show me all that.”

  If either Wanaka or Keo was amused by the skillful return of the ball, neither let it show. The man nodded.

  “You have the right idea, little one. You can help us rig the sea anchor if you’re not too tired—”

  “Of course I’m not!”

  “Not tonight—” the captain interrupted. “Almost time for food, drink, air check, and sleep. In the morning we’ll bend lines to the sails and get them back in the water, the sooner the better; the wind isn’t taking us the way we want to go, and certainly the surface current isn’t either. We’re drifting—can you tell me which way?—and we’re already way south of the city.”

  “South and some east, I suppose. That’s what surface currents should be doing around here.”

  “How were we sailing before the hull began to sink?”

  ’Ao blushed visibly around her mask. The catamaran had not been traveling downwind, of course, but at an angle to it that would provide maximum speed. The more ocean that could be covered by daylight, the better the chance of spotting cargo. The child thought for a moment before she could remember which tack they had been on, and risked a guess. “Well, pretty near south.” Wanaka smiled, slightly reliev
ed.

  “Not too bad. About one-sixty. All right, back to work. We can’t accomplish very much more tonight, but should do what we can of the obvious procedures before dark.”

  ’Ao splashed her way to the partly submerged cabin. She was still unhappy from the recent chastisement, but had learned not to argue a point when she knew she would, whether right or wrong, lose the argument. She would eat before being ordered to.

  The emergency nourishment provided by noise suits was not particularly tasty, and she had been solemnly warned that people in suits outcity sometimes went dangerously long without eating or drinking when their minds were taken up with other matters. A twenty-year-old had that fact firmly impressed on him or her before ever going “outdoors”—leaving the limits of a city even in a small boat. ’Ao had no wish to lose more points on the same day, and showing initiative might even have the opposite effect.

  She finished quickly, however, emerged again from the still floating cabin—Mike had wondered why the air lock sill was half a meter above deck level—swam to the formerly starboard hull, and moved cautiously along it to where the salvaged sheets of fabric had been rather hastily stowed.

  “D’you know which was the big one?” Keo, who had followed her, asked. The child nodded and began working the appropriate sail out of the pile. The man took her at her word and began threading a length of cord through each grommet as it came into view.

  The captain gestured to Mike to accompany her and swam to the cabin.

  The passenger had been wondering why the sail could no longer be used in the normal fashion. Now he found out. The cabin had slid off the now detached deck; apparently some more quick-disconnects had been operated. The mast, still stayed, had fallen over, tilting the deck to a vertical plane as it did so. Wanaka ducked under the cabin, gesturing Mike to follow, pointed out to him a D-ring at the under edge of its floor, and made a pulling gesture. Hoani started to comply, but she stopped him, making a complex but meaningless gesture with one hand and, much more informatively, grasping his wrist with the other. Then she pointed to the opposite side of the cabin and swam toward it, motioning him to follow.