Colonial Survey

by Murray Leinster

  When the man in the vision-screen panted to a stop, Sandringham said calmly:

  “I am assured that before the soil of the island is too far gone, measures now in preparation will be applied to good effect. A Senior Survey Officer is now preparing remedial measures. He is—ah—a specialist in problems of exactly this nature.”

  “But we can’t wait!” panted the civilian fiercely. “I’ll proclaim a planetary emergency! We’ll take over the reserve area by force! We have to—”

  “If you try,” Sandringham told him grimly, “I’ll mount paralysis-guns to stop you!” He said with icy precision: “I urged the planetary government to go easy on this irrigation! You yourself denounced me in the Planetary Council for trying to interfere in civilian affairs. Now you want to interfere in Survey affairs! I resent it as much as you did, and with much better reason!”

  “Murderer!” panted the civilian. “Murderer!”

  Sandringham snapped off the phone-screen. He swung his chair and nodded to Bordman.

  “That was the planetary president,” he said.

  Bordman sat down. The brown dog blinked his eyes open and then got up and shook himself.

  “I’m holding off those idiots!” said the Sector Chief in suppressed fury. “I daren’t tell him it’s more dangerous here than outside! If or when that fuel blows—do you realize that the falling of a single tree-limb might set off an explosion in the Reserve-area here that would—But you do know.”

  “Yes,” admitted Bordman.

  He did know. Some hundreds of tons of ship-fuel going off would destroy this entire end of the island. And almost certainly the concussion would produce violent movement of the rest of the island’s surface. But he was uncomfortable about putting forward his own ideas. He was not a good salesman. He suspected his own opinions until he had proved them with painstaking care, for fear of having them adopted on his past record rather than because they were sound. And then, too, this plan involved junior ranks being informed about the proposal. If they accepted a dubious plan on high authority, and the plan miscarried, it made them share in the mistake. Which hurt their self-confidence. Young Barnes, now, would undoubtedly obey any order and accept any hint blindly, and Bordman honestly did not know why. But as a matter of the training of junior ranks—

  “About the work to be done,” said Bordman, “I imagine the seawater freshening plants have closed down?”

  “They have!” said Sandringham. “They insisted on piling them up over my protests. Now if anybody proposed operating one, they’d scream to high Heaven!”

  “What was done with the minerals taken out of the seawater?” Bordman asked.

  “You know how the fresheners work!” said Sandringham. “They pump seawater in at one end, and at the other one pipe yields fresh water, and the other heavy brine. They dump the heavy brine back overboard and the fresh water’s pumped up and distributed through the irrigation systems.”

  “It’s too bad some of the salts weren’t stored,” said Bordman. “Could a freshener be started up again?”

  Sandringham stared. Then he said:

  “Oh, the civilians would love that! No! If any man started up a water-freshener, the civilians would kill him and smash it!”

  “But I think we’ll need one. We’ll want to irrigate some of the Reserve area.”

  “My God! What for?” demanded Sandringham. He paused. “No! Don’t tell me! Let me try to work it out.”

  There was silence. The brown dog blinked at Bordman. He held out his hand. The dog came sedately to him and bent his head to be scratched.

  After a considerable time, the Sector Chief growled:

  “I give up. Do you want to tell me?”

  Bordman nodded. He said:

  “In a sense, the trouble here is that there’s a swamp underground, made by irrigation. It slides. It’s really a swamp upside down. On Soris II we had a very odd problem, only the swamp was right-side-up there. We’d several hundred square miles of swamp that could be used if we could drain it. We built a soil-dam around it. You know the trick. You bore two rows of holes twenty feet apart and put soil-coagulant in them. It’s an old, old device. They used it a couple of hundred years ago back on Earth. The coagulant seeps out in all directions and coagulates the dirt. Makes it water-tight. It swells with water and fills the space between the soil-particles. In a week or two there’s a water-tight barrier, made of soil, going down to bed-rock. You might call it a coffer-dam. No water can seep through. On Soris II we knew that if we could get the water out of the mud inside this coffer-dam, we’d have cultivable ground.”

  Sandringham said skeptically:

  “But it called for ten years’ pumping, eh? When mud doesn’t move, pumping isn’t easy!”

  “We wanted the soil,” said Bordman. “And we didn’t have ten years. The Soris II colony was supposed to relieve population-pressure on another planet. The pressure was terrific. We had to be ready to receive some colonists in eight months. We had to get the water out quicker than it could be pumped. And there was another problem mixed up with it. The swamp vegetation was pretty deadly. It had to be gotten rid of, too. So we made the dam and—well—took certain measures, and then we irrigated it. With water from a nearby river. It was very ticklish. But we had dry ground in four months, with the swamp-vegetation killed and turning back to humus.”

  “I ought to read your reports,” said Sandringham dourly. “I’m too busy, ordinarily. But I should read them. How’d you get rid of the water?”

  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 him 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 Colonial 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 bed-rock.

  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 him 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 and 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 drainage layouts. That’ll 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. Downgrade 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 shallow 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 sea-water 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 sea-water seeped out into the soil near bed-rock. But it was sea-water. It was heavily mineralized. It is a peculiarity of sea-water that it is an electrolyte, 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 soap out, when they make it!” He’d 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 sea-shore. 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 molds. Freeze it in plastic bags the size of the 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 s
ubstance 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 per cent solution it’s only five per cent 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 top-soil 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. Salt water almost coagulated it.

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