Hal Clement - Cycle of Fire

They were to proceed on their present northeast course until they reached the sea. That was not the closest way to the coast, but it brought them to a point at which a chain of islands stretched across to another continental mass. Getting across the ocean, they would head back along the coast to the left. Kruger assumed that this would be west, but actually it was east; he was already much closer than he realized to Abyormen’s north pole, and would pass it before reaching the coast. Dar did not indicate this on his map. They would travel along the new coast for a considerable distance and then head inland. Their journey appeared to terminate shortly thereafter. Dar indicated a vast area with a satisfied air, said, “Ice!” and sat back as though he had completed a great work. Kruger did not feel quite so happy. He indicated the area the other had just drawn.

“You mean — it’s somewhere in this region? Here? or here?”

“Right here.” Dar indicated the point at which he had already terminated their course line.

“But what do you mean by the ice all over this place? You can’t have ships covering half the planet.”

“I don’t understand ‘ships.’ Ice is all over.”

“I still don’t get it.”

Dar had had enough language trouble by this time not to feel particularly exasperated at Kruger’s slowness; he proceeded to draw more maps. These were circular, and it quickly became evident that they were views of the whole planet from different directions. His ability to draw such charts was strictly in accord with Kruger’s ideas about his origin, so the boy did not feel any surprise from this source. The details did bother him, however.

“You mean that there really is a very big area covered with ice.”

“Two of them.” Dar indicated his charts. Kruger frowned. Ice caps are noticeable features from space, and he had certainly seen none during the landing. Of course, he was not a trained observer, and had been paying more attention to the behavior of the pilot during the landing maneuver; and Abyormen’s atmosphere has its share of clouds. He could quite possibly have missed them for any of those reasons. There was certainly no chance of their having been on the dark side of the planet; at the time of the landing the world’s position with respect to the suns was such that there was no dark side.

At any rate the presence of a glacial area was extremely encouraging, particularly right now. The jungle did afford some protection from the approaching Theer which had been lacking on the lava desert, but the higher humidity pretty well offset this advantage. Kruger did not dare discard any more of his clothing because of the ultraviolet light coming from Arren.

As it turned out, he simply had to stop traveling for about fifty hours about the time of Theer’s closest approach — the time for which Dar had a phrase in his language, which Kruger naturally translated as “summer.” They camped by a stream which the boy hoped would not go dry while they remained, built a shelter whose thatched roof was meant to provide shade and was also kept wet to provide some evaporational cooling, and settled down to wait. Theer’s crimson disk, partly visible through the trees, swelled slowly as it moved eastward and slightly higher; continued to swell as it arched across the top of its path and back toward the horizon which Kruger still considered the southeastern one, though his proximity to the pole had made it more like northeast; reached its maximum size, and began visibly to shrink once more before it finally disappeared. It had swung through fully a third of its apparent loop in the sky in only fifty hours, for which Kruger was duly thankful. With its disappearance the journey was resumed.

“Just how sure are you that we are heading toward the part of the coast nearest the island chain?” This question was finally understood.

“I can’t be positive, but we’re somewhere near right. I’ve flown over this route a lot.”

“You can’t be using landmarks, though; we couldn’t see anything much smaller than a mountain with all this jungle, and there haven’t been any mountains. Couldn’t we be working to one side or the other?”

“It is possible but doesn’t matter greatly. There are low hills — volcanic cones — along the coast and you can climb one of those if we don’t see any islands from the shore.” Kruger skipped for the moment the question of why he should be the one to do the climbing.

“But suppose even from a hilltop we can’t see any of the island chain. Which way should we travel? Wouldn’t it be better to strike for the coast now, so that there’ll be no doubt of the direction after we get there?”

“But I don’t know the route you suggest.”

“You don’t know this one, either; you’ve never walked it before. If your maps are right there’s no chance of getting lost, and much less chance than otherwise of wasting time once we reach the coast.”

Dar Lang Ahn pondered this bit of wisdom for a few moments and then agreed unreservedly. The course was changed accordingly. All went on as before. It did occur afterward to Dar that perhaps Kruger had been motivated by a desire to get back into a volcanic region sooner.

There were still several hundred miles to go, though Kruger was not sure of this — scale had been one feature left in considerable doubt on Dar’s maps. A novelist of the nineteenth century could have made much of every mile of it; the way was made difficult by all the natural characteristics of a rain forest. Undergrowth and swamps delayed them; dangerous animals threatened them; time seemed to stretch onward endlessly and unchangingly. An occasional lava outcrop, usually heavily eroded, served to ease travel for a few miles, but the jungle always returned.

Very gradually, as they advanced, the portion of Theer’s loop above the horizon diminished from the eight days near the mudpots to seven, and then to six. Simultaneously the tilt of Arren’s diurnal circle changed. On the lava field it had been higher in the south than in the north; now the blue star held nearly even altitude all around the horizon. It was this observation which forced on Kruger’s attention the fact that they must be very close to Abyormen’s north pole. That, in a way, was good, but in another it bothered him. If they were practically at the pole, where was this ice cap? Or, since Dar stuck to his claim that it was across an ocean in the direction they were traveling, why wasn’t it at the pole? Kruger was sure that his problem could be solved in minutes by anyone with the training, but a sixteen-year-old cadet whose planned career involves piloting interstellar vessels simply doesn’t get that kind of education.

In any case he was still not absolutely sure that he was interested in the ice cap itself; it seemed likely that Dar’s people had simply landed their ship at its edge and Dar was using it as a reference point. The boy was not quite sure what he should do when he got to the ship, but there was no doubt in his mind about the advisability of going there.

All through the long journey the speed and clarity of their conversation improved. The language used was a hodge-podge of the two native tongues involved, but it contained a far larger proportion of Dar’s words. This was deliberate on Kruger’s part; when he did meet others of Dar’s race he wanted to be able to speak to them without needing Dar as an interpreter. Before the pair reached the coast they were talking quite freely, though reiteration and sign language were still frequently necessary; but the basic misunderstanding was still present and seemed less likely than ever to be cleared up. The trouble now was that misunderstandings frequently went unrecognized; each party thought he had expressed himself clearly, or understood perfectly, as the case might be, when actually the thought received was very different from that transmitted. An example of this occurred one day when the question of possible rescue by some of Dar’s people had arisen.