Hal Clement - Heavy Planet

“That would certainly be fair enough, Barl; I’m sure my people will gladly agree to it. But how about the land travel itself? This is country you know nothing about, as you have said; might not your crew be afraid of unknown land, and high hills over them, and maybe animals larger than can possibly grow in your part of the world?”

“We have faced dangers before,” the Mesklinite replied. “I was able to get used to high places — even the top of your tank. As for animals, the Bree is armed with fire, and none that walk on land could be as large as some that swim the oceans.”

“That’s true enough, Barl. Very well. I was not trying to discourage you, goodness knows; but I wanted to be sure you had thought the matter over before you embarked on such a project. It’s hardly one that can be backed out of in the middle.”

“That I can readily understand, but you need not fear, Charles. I must return to the ship now; the clouds are gathering again. I will tell the crew what we are going to do; and lest the thoughts of fear should come to any of them, I will remind them that the profits of the voyage will be shared according to rank. There is no member of that crew who would put fear in the way of wealth.”

“And you?” Lackland chuckled as he asked the question. “Oh, I’m not afraid.” The Mesklinite vanished into the night as he spoke the words, and Lackland was never sure just how he meant them. Rosten, when he heard the new plan, made a number of caustic remarks to the effect that Lackland could certainly be counted on for ideas that would give him use of a tank. “It seems as though it should work, though,” he admitted grudgingly. “Just what sort of sled are we supposed to build for this ocean liner of your friend’s? How big is it, again?”

“The Bree is about forty feet long and fifteen across; I suppose it draws five or six inches. It’s made of a lot of rafts about three feet long and half as wide, roped together so they can move fairly freely — I can guess why, on this world.”

“Hmph. So can I. If a ship that long had its two ends supported by waves while the middle hung free, up near the pole, it would be in pieces before long whether it started that way or not. How is it driven?”

“Sails; there are masts on twenty or thirty of the rafts. I suspect there may be centerboards on some of them too, retractable so the ship can be beached; but I never asked Barlennan. I don’t really know how far advanced the art of sailing is on this world, but from the casual way in which he speaks of crossing long stretches of open ocean, I assume they know about beating into a wind.”

“Seems reasonable. Well, we’ll build something out of light metal here on the moon, and cart it down to you when we finish.”

“You’d better not bring it down until winter’s over. If you leave it inland it’ll get lost under the snow, and if you drop it at the seashore someone may have to dive for it, if the water line goes up the way Barlennan expects.”

“If it’s going to, why is it waiting so long? The winter is more than half over, and there’s been a fantastic amount of precipitation in the parts of the southern hemisphere that we can see.”

“Why ask me things like that? There are meteorologists on the staff, I believe, unless they’ve gone crazy trying to study this planet. I have my own worries. When do I get another tank?”

“When you can use it; after winter is over, as I said. And if you blow that one up it?ll be no use howling for another, because there isn?t one closer than Earth.? Barlennan, hearing the gist of this conversation at his next visit some hundreds of days later, was perfectly satisfied. His crew was enthusiastic about the proposed trip; they might, as he had implied, be lured by the prospective gain, but there was liberally distributed among them a share of the plain love of adventure which had carried Barlennan so far into unknown territory. “We will go as soon as the storms break,” he said to Lackland. “There will still be much snow on the ground; that will help where the course lies over land different from the loose sand of the beach.”

“I don’t think it will make much difference to the tank,” replied Lackland. “It will to us,” pointed out Barlennan. “I admit it would not be dangerous to be shaken off the deck, but it would be annoying in the middle of a meal. Have you decided what would be the best course to follow across the land?”

“I’ve been working on it.” The man brought out the map that was the result of his efforts. “The shortest route, that we discovered together, has the disadvantage of requiring that I tow you over a mountain range. It might be possible, but I don’t like to think of the effects on your crew. I don’t know how high those mountains are, but any altitude is too much on this world. “I’ve worked out this route, which I’ve shown by a red line. It follows up the river that empties into the big bay on this side of the point, for about twelve hundred miles — not counting the small curves in the river, which we probably won’t have to follow. Then it goes straight across country for another four hundred or so, and reaches the head of another river. You could probably sail down that if you wanted, or have me keep on towing — whichever would be faster or more comfortable for you. Its worst feature is that so much of it runs three or four hundred miles south of the equator — another half gravity or more for me to take. I can handle it, though.”

“If you are sure of that, I would say that this is indeed the best way.” Barlennan gave his statement after careful study of the map. “Your towing will probably be faster than sailing, at least in the river where there will probably be no room to tack.” He had to use his own language for the last word; Lackland received the explanation of its meaning with satisfaction. He had guessed correctly about the extent of nautical progress among Barlennan’s people, it seemed. With the route agreed on, there was little more for Lackland to do while Mesklin drifted along its orbit toward the next equinox. That would not be too long, of course; with the southern hemisphere’s midwinter occurring almost exactly at the time the giant world was closest to its sun, orbital motion during fall and winter was extremely rapid. Each of those seasons was a shade over two Earthly months in length — spring and summer, on the other hand, each occupied some eight hundred and thirty Earth days, roughly twenty-six months. There should be plenty of time for the voyage itself. Lackland’s enforced idleness was not shared aboard the Bree. Preparations for the overland journey were numerous and complicated by the fact that no member of the crew knew exactly what the ship would have to face. They might have to make the entire journey on stored food; there might be animal life along the way sufficient not only to feed them but to provide trading material if its skins and bones were of the right sort. The trip might be as safe as the sailors avowedly believed all land journeys to be, or they might face dangers from both the terrain and the creatures inhabiting it. About the first they could do little; that was the Flyer’s responsibility. Concerning the second, weapons were brought to a high degree of readiness. Bigger clubs than even Hars or Terblannen could swing up in the higher latitudes were manufactured; some of the plants which stored crystals of chlorine in their stems were found, and the flame tanks replenished from them. There were, of course, no projectile weapons; the idea had never developed on a world where none of the inhabitants had ever seen a solid, unsupported object dropping because it fell too fast to be visible. A 50-caliber bullet fired horizontally at Mesklin’s pole would drop over one hundred feet in its first hundred yards of travel. Barlennan, since meeting Lackland, had come to have some idea of the “throw” concept and had even considered asking the Flyer about the possibility of weapons based on the principle; but he had decided to stick to more familiar arms. Lackland, on his part, had done a little wondering about the possible results of meeting a race, on their trip across the isthmus, which had developed the bow and arrow. He did a little more than Barlennan with the thought; he outlined the situation to Rosten and asked that the towing tank be equipped with a 40-millimeter gun with thermite and explosive shells. After the usual grumbling Rosten had acquiesced. The sled was finished easily and quickly; large amounts of sheet metal were available, and the structure was certainly not complicated. Following Lackland’s advice, it was not brought to the surface of Mesklin immediately, since the storms were still depositing their loads of ammonia-tainted methane snow. The ocean level had still not risen appreciably near the equator, and the meteorologists had been making unkind remarks at first about Barlennan’s truthfulness and linguistic ability; but as sunlight reached farther and farther into the southern hemisphere with the approach of spring, and new photographs were secured and compared with those of the preceding fall, the weather men grew silent and were observed wandering around the station muttering distractedly to themselves. The sea level in the higher latitudes had already risen several hundreds of feet, as the native had predicted, and was still rising visibly as the days went by. The phenomenon of widely differing sea levels at the same time on the same planet was a little outside the experience of Earth-trained meteorologists, and none of the non-human scientists with the expedition could throw any light on the matter, either. The weather men were still racking their brains when the sun’s diurnal arc eased southward past the equator and spring officially began in Mesklin’s southern hemisphere. The storms had decreased tremendously in both frequency and intensity long before this time, partly because the planet’s extreme flattening had cut down the radiation on the north polar cap very rapidly after midwinter and partly because Mesklin’s distance from the sun had increased more than fifty percent during the same time; Barlennan, when consulted on the matter, proved perfectly willing to start the journey with the astronomical advent of spring, and showed no apparent anxiety about equinoctial gales. Lackland reported the natives’ readiness to the station on the inner moon, and the operation of transferring tank and sled to the surface was started at once; everything had been in readiness for weeks. Two trips of the cargo rocket were necessary, though the sledge was light and the thrust developed by the hydrogen-iron slugs fantastically high. The sled was brought down first, with the intention of letting the crew of the Bree haul it onto the structure while the rocket went back for the tank; but Lackland warned against landing close to the ship, so that the clumsy-looking vehicle was left beside the dome until the tractor arrived to tow it over to the shore. Lackland himself drove the tractor, although the crew of the rocket stood by to satisfy their curiosity and, if needed, lend assistance with the loading procedure. No human help was needed. The Mesklinites, under a mere three Earth gravities, were perfectly capable, physically, of lifting their ship and walking off with it; and the insuperable mental conditioning that prevented their getting any part of their bodies underneath such a mass did not prevent their towing it easily across the beach with ropes-each crewman, of course, anchored firmly to a tree with one or both sets of rear pincers. The Bree, sails furled and centerboards retracted, slid easily across the sand and onto the gleaming platform of metal. Barlennan’s winter-long vigilance to keep her from freezing to the beach had proved adequate; also, in the last couple of weeks, the ocean level had started to rise as it had already done farther south. The advancing liquid, which had already necessitated moving the vessel two hundred yards inland, would certainly have melted her free had that been necessary. The builders of the sledge, on distant Toorey, had provided eyes and cleats in sufficient numbers to allow the sailors to lash the Bree firmly in place. The cordage used appeared remarkably thin to Lackland, but the natives showed full confidence in it. They had some justice, the Earthman reflected; it had held their ship on the beach during storms when he himself would not have cared to walk abroad in full armor. It might, he reflected, be worth while to find out if the cordage and fabric the Mesklinites used could stand terrestrial temperatures. This train of thought was interrupted by Barlennan’s approach with the report that all was ready on the ship and sledge. The latter was already attached to the tank by its tow cable; the tank itself was stocked with sufficient food to last its one-man crew for several days. The plan was to resupply Lackland by rocket whenever necessary, landing far enough ahead so that the flying rocket would not cause too much perturbation to the natives on the ship. This was not to be done oftener than strictly necessary; after the first accident, Lackland did not intend to open the tank to the outer air oftener than he could possibly help. “I guess we’re ready to go, then, little friend,” he said in response to Barlennan’s statement. “I won’t need sleep for a good many hours yet, and we can get quite a distance upstream in that time. I wish your days were of a decent length; I’m not too happy about driving over a snow field in the dark. I don’t think even your crew could pull the tank out of a hole, even if they could find the traction.”