Still River

by Hal Clement

  “Not too likely, if her light areas were the metal crystals,” pointed out Jenny.

  “True. Here we come. I can’t see where you hit the fluff, Molly, but the stuff is so irregular that it might be any of the hollows. One trouble is that I can’t get this light very far away from myself, so there’s no shadow perspective to speak of. Depth is hard to judge. I won’t try to make any collections until I’m at the edge of the crystals; then maybe I’ll get some of your sticky stuff. No, skip that; I’ll catch up to you and reset your robot first, and we’ll do the research coming back. All right?”

  “All right. I hope it won’t be too much longer. This passage is opening out larger and larger, and the wind has dropped so I can’t feel it any more, and the floor is bare rock—the whole thing is boring, and I’m getting rather tired of it for the moment.”

  It was still a number of minutes, in spite of her higher speed, before Carol could report the cavern wall in sight ahead of her.

  “Have you left the crystal region? I had before I could see the wall.”

  “The fluff is gone, yes. There’s something else on the ground, though. You must have been able to see it. It’s white; lighter than the sand on the surface. You’d have gone after it for some of your ice…”

  “I didn’t see anything of the sort. It’s white to your eyes; we’ll have to get a real reflection spectrum. Collect it, by all means. I can wait for that.”

  “Sure thing.” Carol dropped to the ground, trotting behind the robot, and bent to scoop up some of the white material, bringing it close to her lamp. Then she stopped where she was.

  “Molly! It’s not snow or ice, or metal crystals. It’s plastic—muddy—sticky…”

  “Prelife?” came Jenny’s eager voice.

  “Jenny—Molly—it’s growing. It’s alive.”

  “I didn’t see it!” said Molly firmly.

  “Of course you didn’t. Not on this planet.” Joe’s voice was equally firm.

  “Carol!” Charley almost shrieked. “Are you on your robot?”

  “No, but I can see it. Thanks, Charley, I forgot for a minute. There—it’s just going into an opening in the cave wall.

  I’ll be up to it in a moment—there. Back on board. You had me scared for a moment, but I knew better than to set this thing to go faster than I could.”

  “Does the place match Molly’s description?” There was an impressive silence lasting several seconds before the Shervah’s voice came back.

  “No. Not in the least. She didn’t find any life, either.”

  Chapter Eleven

  Of Course I Don’t See It

  “Better stop right now!” exclaimed Charley.

  “Thanks. A good idea,” replied the Shervah, almost as tonelessly as Joe’s usual style. “I’ll need to be careful with this rope as I retrace, though there shouldn’t be enough of it to make a real tangle. Can you suggest whether I should go right or left when I get back to the big cave?”

  “I take it we were too optimistic about the constancy of the wind,” Molly opined before Charley could react as she feared he might. He could read sarcasm in words, with or without tones.

  “That would seem to be it. I think I’ll stop the machine and hunt on foot along the wall; that will be quicker than recoiling rope if I pick the wrong direction first time.”

  “Unless you encounter some of that sticky material Molly reported,” interjected Charley.

  “That’s a point. I’ll be very careful if anything but bare rock is underfoot. I’m back out of that tunnel and am stopping the robot. There.”

  “Bare rock, or more of this live stuff you just reported?” asked Jenny.

  “Patches of both. Don’t distract me now. I’m going along the wall, to my left as one faces it. The cave floor is dipping noticeably downhill, and the wall at my side is rough enough and slopes back enough so I think I could climb it in this gravity. You certainly could, Jenny. Now I’m at the bottom of the dip as far as the wall base is concerned, though the floor out to my left is lower still. I think I see a puddle of liquid there—you didn’t spot anything of that sort, either, did you, Molly?”

  “No, I’m afraid not.”

  “I don’t see how you could have missed it. Our tracks diverged, all right.”

  “How deep is the puddle?” came Jenny’s grating tone.

  “I can’t tell from here but will find out later if there’s a chance. I’m heading uphill again. I’ll go a little over a kilo this way, and if I don’t find any match with what Molly saw I’ll come back and do the other direction. It’s all bare rock now, none of the living stuff and none of the crystals—I can’t help wondering if they’re alive, too. Ddravgh!”

  “Symbol?” queried four voices politely.

  “Sorry. Impolite. I stepped on something extremely slippery. Just a moment while I get upright again. Maybe it was water ice, Molly—remember those skating sessions? If one would only fall with decent speed here, there wouldn’t be time for one’s feet to get so far from underneath.”

  “What did you slip on? Please collect it!”

  “All right, I guess Molly can spare a quarter of a minute. It’s a very thin layer, and not easy to scrape off the rock, but—ah, I don’t have to get it from the rock. I have some on my armor. It’s slimy, not brittle; sorry, Mol, I guess it can’t be your ice.”

  “With your mass, and the local gravity and temperature, would even water ice have been slippery?” asked Joe.

  “I’m not sure,” the Human replied thoughtfully. “That point didn’t occur to me. I just think of water ice when I think ice, and I think of ice as slippery. Well, it was a nice hope while it lasted.”

  “Now relax, Jenny, we’ll get it to you some time,” Carol continued. “I’m traveling again.” She fell silent, and for several minutes no one else found anything to say.

  Then the Shervah reported again. “That’s the limit I set to the left. I’m heading back to the robot. There was nothing but that slippery patch to watch out for, so I’m going a lot faster. I’ll reach the machine in a minute or two.”

  Rather to Molly’s surprise—her optimism was suffering another setback—this confidence proved justified and the small woman set out on the opposite leg of her journey. Molly’s presumed path was not within this range, either; and once again back at the robot, Carol had to make a decision.

  “You should come back and go out again when we make a mapping robot of the sort Joe suggested. It seems there is a complicated set of caves down there, that the winds change capriciously—or at least that we do not yet know the pattern of their changes—and a real map will be needed” was Jenny’s firm opinion. Joe said nothing; rather to Molly’s surprise, Charley was also silent. She herself did not feel very objective at this point. She very much hoped that Carol would not go back, but for purely Human reasons was embarrassed to say anything.

  “I’m staying,” said the Shervah flatly. “There is no way we could map this whole place fast enough to catch up with Molly while she’s moving. If you want to come down yourself with such a machine, Jenny, I’m all for it; but I’m looking for Molly.”

  “I agree,” said Joe. “I take it you will ride the robot now all around the cave wall. That place can’t be too big. It would probably be best to leave the rest of the rope where you are now; unwinding it around the circumference of the cavern will accomplish nothing that I can see.”

  “Good point,” agreed Carol. “It will be easier riding without it, too; I won’t have to watch out for being caught as it pays out. There, it’s off. Here I go. Any supernatural basis for a decision between left and right?”

  No one proffered any, and she set out with no further remarks. There was little said in the boat, either. “Give this one a body that can be ridden comfortably, Joe,” grated Jenny’s voice, to tell Molly all she needed to know what was going on above. She reflected that the wind chart was still being made back at the tent, even if its designer wasn’t there to watch. Poor Joe would get a look at it
eventually, and of course she had no way of knowing that until that look was taken, she would be getting deeper and deeper into trouble.

  A little rill of liquid, presumably ammonia since the surroundings were too cold for liquid water and much too hot for liquid methane even at this pressure, joined her path from one side and kept her company thereafter, picking up tributaries occasionally until it was a brook half a meter across. The passage she was following had widened gradually until she could see neither roof nor sides, and the wind dropped below her personal detection ability, though the robot still seemed to have an opinion about it. It was still coming from downslope, and the slope itself was getting much steeper; the stream was becoming a series of rapids and even falls of several meters height. She was carried some distance first to one side and then the other of the brook, but the latter never went out of sight. She kept the others informed of all this; Carol acknowledged with interest. They had seen no rivers at any point on the surface.

  “Keep your light on and your eyes open for more life!” the Shervah exclaimed. “It certainly ought to be around any liquid. If the passage levels off and there are pools or lakes, be really alert.”

  “As alert as I can,” replied the Human. “There’s going to be another trouble before too long, though. I don’t know how much longer I can keep awake; and if the wind isn’t reliable, as it didn’t seem to be in the big cave, any more gaps in my own recollection of where I’ve been could be pretty serious.”

  “That was one reason I stayed down here,” replied Carol. “If we could think of a way for you to stop while you slept, things would be much less tense. It would be rather nice if that machine were to jam in a narrow passage for a few hours, wouldn’t it?”

  “It found its way around the only narrow passage I’ve seen so far, but I’m all for another,” admitted Molly. “I’ll look for that as well as your life forms; the more I have to think of, the better I can stay awake—I hope.”

  “I’ve been about four kilos along this wall so far. It’s hard to believe the cavern wind could have changed so much. It probably means I started the wrong way. I’d be tempted to go back, only for all I know I may be more than halfway around this thing by now. As Jenny said, a real map would be useful. I wish I had some idea what could have made this space; I might be able to make an intelligent guess at its size. On any decent planet, gravity would prevent a cave from getting too big before its roof caved in, but this is not a decent planet. I could almost believe this was a big bubble, maintained by gas pressure.”

  “Except,” pointed out Molly, “that there is direct communication with the outside air, and the pressure in here can’t be significantly different.”

  “Not even from altitude difference?” asked Joe. “You could really be a kilometer or two down by now.”

  “And what difference would even five kilos make with this atmosphere at this temperature in this gravity?” asked Molly, who had had time to do some mental arithmetic since the question had come up earlier.

  Joe took a second or two to run through the same figures. “Less than a thousandth of an atmosphere,” he said at last.

  “Which would not show on my suit gauge, I’m afraid. If I do get deep enough in this planet to read it there, I’m not sure I want to know it. I’ll be facing a long, long trip back up again.”

  “How about a kame?” asked Charley.

  “A what? Oh, I remember…”

  “A place where a deposit of the ice you’re looking for used to be, but melted or vaporized out, leaving your cave.”

  “Where did you learn about that? I didn’t think ammonia behaved that much like ice.”

  “I don’t know whether it does. I’ve done a lot of reading about your world since you people showed up. It’s a fantastic place. I can’t get over water’s expanding when it freezes…”

  “Neither could Carol when she found how slippery that made it,” Molly remarked drily. “Say, I wonder…”

  “Molly! I think I’ve found where you went in!” came Carol’s excited voice. “Wait a bit, I’ll check a few hundred meters around out in the cavern. Yes, your crystal region, and what seem to be your traces are here.”

  “About how far did you have to go to find it?” asked Molly.

  “I’m estimating about six kilometers.” The others knew that with the combination of depth judgment and memory possessed by the Shervah, this was probably good within ten percent. “That leaves another question. Am I most of the way around the cave, so that it will be quicker to go on for the rope than to go back, or not?”

  “We’d better hope you are,” said Joe drily. “If not, the rope is nowhere nearly long enough. With Molly getting farther away all the time, there is already some doubt about its reaching her.”

  “Right. I’ll go on.

  “Also,” added Carol happily, “that will give us a good chance to find the actual size of this cave and maybe start some reasonable guessing about what formed it.”

  This rather barbed implication about Charley’s suggestion was not taken up, even by the Kantrick.

  “You’re traveling as you talk, I hope,” remarked Molly.

  “Absolutely. I’ve gone about four hundred meters from the narrow end of the crack—the end you didn’t go into—and you will be pleased to know that I remember this part of the cavern. The rope is a kilo farther along. I’ll be with you soon.”

  “You mean if you’d gone only a little farther to the right on your original foot search, you’d have saved an hour or so?” asked Charley.

  “You seem to have the picture. If Joe hasn’t tied up all the tools, you might start some more rope in the shop while you’re waiting. Jenny must have filed the specs. I hope we won’t need it, but I certainly can’t promise we won’t.”

  Molly was tempted to express her annoyance at the lost time even more vehemently than Charley, but again found that she would rather not reveal such a feeling in Joe’s hearing. It had happened; there had been no way to foresee it, and there was nothing to be done about it now. Complaint, or even remark, was meaningless. Leave that sort of thing for Buzz, until he outgrew it.

  She was getting sleepy, and the surrounding darkness, relieved only by her own light, was more and more oppressive. She had used most of the rope Charley had loaded on the robot to fasten herself securely; she would not fall off even if she did go to sleep. Now, however, she began to wonder whether that were wise. If Carol were really close on her trail, was it best for Molly herself to stay with her own machine so faithfully—perhaps beyond the reach of the Shervah’s kilometers of guideline? If she did fall asleep, she would be unable to report anything that might give warning of another branch in the trail; she might descend into another cavern as large as or larger than the first, with equally variable winds, without ever knowing it. She was certainly descending, much too fast for her own peace of mind when she thought of the length of Carol’s line.

  If only this tireless, indifferent thing that was carrying her would stop! If only—

  She smiled and then grinned broadly as an idea took shape. For a moment she thought of calling Joe, but he must be busy on the mapping machine by now; and even if that weren’t going to be needed for her own rescue, the Rimmore and Carol would be annoyed if work were delayed on it. No, there was no need for discourtesy yet; she could report in a few minutes. She remembered now what Joe had said about the pressure sensors on the robot—a point she had known herself during their construction, though she had forgotten it for the moment.

  Her armor recycled everything chemical, of course, with negligible leakage; all it needed in any normal—or over ninety-nine percent of all abnormal—usage was replacement of energy. It had water and food buffers, some full and some empty at the start, to handle lack of uniformity in use versus production of these. In other words, she had spare water.

  She could get at the spare water. The processing units of the armor were around her midsection, making her feel at times, where freedom of motion was concerned, a little
as she had in the weeks before Buzz had been born. There was no risk of mistake, deadly as the environment around her was; she could have taken the armor apart and reassembled it blindfolded—Humans sometimes retired to Earth, but they grew up in other environments; and a Human who did not know armor was simply not adult. One was expected to design and build one’s own.

  The fact that she could open it without looking did not mean that she did. Carefully she unsealed a panel near her left hip, closed four valves, and removed a flexible container that held rather less than a liter of water. Two of the valves were on the container itself, the other two on the other side of the breaks with the armor tubing. Now, carefully, she reopened one of the former, and with gentle pressure began to squirt a fine stream of liquid over the front surface of the robot.

  The metal was some forty degrees below water’s freezing point, and a film of ice quickly formed over its surface. Well before the task was complete, Molly could tell her plan was working; the robot’s direction of travel began to veer to one side. Using the brook as her direction guide, she covered the cylinder until the machine was moving back in the direction from which it had come.

  She thought briefly of coating its entire surface and waiting where she was for Carol, but decided against it for several reasons.

  One was economy of water. Another was the robot’s computer; it was, as Joe had said, ready to allow for and discount plugged pressure ports. If she covered most of the surface with ice, she might miss a few tiny areas and find the machine moving in some unpredictable direction while she wasted even more water trying to find and block a single microscopic opening.

  “I’m heading back toward you, Carol,” she reported briefly. The response from three incomprehensibly mixed voices was completely satisfying. Carol, Jenny, and Joe all produced variations of “What did you do?” and “How did you do it?” Charley said nothing on the general channel; his voice came through on private. “I wondered when it would be. Are you sure the rope will still reach?”