Hal Clement - Heavy Planet

“Yes, Captain.” If the sailor were uneasy, his voice failed to betray the fact. He came over the side in a few seconds, presumably coiling his safety line as he came. “Here, sir.”

“Can you think of any way back?”

“No, sir. We’re — we’re underneath—” The voice trembled. “Don’t be ashamed of being scared. It would probably mean something worse if you weren’t. Did you feel better while you were working just now?”

“Yes, Captain.”

“Feel the piece of sail cloth I’m holding here.”

“I have it, sir.”

“Put it over your head and eyes, like this.” Barlennan helped. “Find some thin line and tie it there. Then go back overboard, and check the bottom all around us for small rocks. I think we can use some — as many as you can find.” Sherrer was neither stupid nor unimaginative, but was not the sort to ask anything like?How?? to an order. He simply obeyed. Barlennan was satisfied. He didn?t want rocks, he wanted information, and would have had a hard time in answering a?how? or a?why? just then. The Flyers had not taught him any psychology, but his profession had; and he had grasped certain principles of research?not as well as his mate, but better than vaguely. Sherrer obviously shouldn?t know in advance what was expected?or rather, hoped. Let him look for rocks for half a day or so, and then come aboard with them, and give him something else to do with the hood still over his eyes. Something not too demanding of his attention— But how about Barlennan’s own attention? Captain or not, there were moments when the tonnage above seemed to fill his mind. There was nothing else to think of. Nothing else in the world. Maybe he’d better make another hood for himself. No. He was the captain, and he knew what was up there. If anyone could ignore it without special help, he should be the one. Of course, it would be nice if something else were to get his attention away from the World Above. It was, indeed, a relief when something did. Jeanette had spent several minutes calling Barlennan after his communicator had gone silent and dark. She had his verbal reports up to that time, and wasn’t very hopeful after it; the fadeout hadn’t been quite instantaneous. The drifters hadn’t hit anything hard and suddenly, up to the time sound and picture had faded. The waves the communicators used were long enough to reach their goal by diffraction even when Toorey was on the far side of the cliff from the Bree’s crew, so the basket must have been pretty well surrounded by some obstacle within a second or two after that. Barlennan had reported that the methane was flowing into openings in the rockfall; she had seen this, as well. And Jeanette had as clear an idea as any human being possibly could of what being inside a cave or a tunnel at “normal” gravity must mean to a Mesklinite. She switched to Dondragmer’s set at once. He also had heard his captain’s messages, delayed barely a second by the round trip to Toorey, and had as clear an idea as the Flyer of what had happened. Some of his sailors had already been ordered downstream to investigate the end of the rockfall; after a moment’s thought, he let them go on. He split the remainder into two groups, sending one up toward the point where the eddy had presumably caused all the trouble and keeping the rest with him to get as close as possible as quickly as possible to where he was now pretty sure the original Bree was stranded. The stream had started to widen now as the captain had reported earlier from his upstream position, but the methane at the edge away from the plateau was not uncomfortably warm. Maybe they could reach the ship, or what they hoped was the ship, without getting scalded. The mate told the Flyers what he was doing, and led the way. The river was widening, its edge coming to meet them. The radio remained behind; swimming with it was not an option, and walking on the bottom with it seemed inadvisable. Whoever carried it would be able to talk to the others and report to Toorey, but its viewing equipment would be useless unless it could be held above the surface. It seemed better to learn what could be found out, and then come back for the communicator. No one on the moon was pleased, but no one argued. The bottom was ordinary ground at first. It had been dry land since long before the Bree’ s arrival, presumably; the liquid methane was spreading wider and wider past its former bank, and there had been little change in the volume of flow in the thousands of days since their first arrival. There was presumably little change now; the overflow represented liquid displaced from its former bed by rock. The crew waded for a while, then had to swim, watching where they were headed part of the time but checking below the surface frequently. They were something like half way to where the ship seemed to be when the bottom began to show lighter in color, and closer examination showed that it was now the same ammonia slush reported earlier by the captain’s quartet. It was being washed downstream, they could see at first; then it covered the bottom with a uniform sheet of white, and its motion couldn’t be seen. Physical contact indicated that it was still moving. The methane was getting deeper, and Dondragmer kept a close eye on what he was now almost certain was the Bree . It had been hauled well ashore, but was now out in the stream — or rather, the stream had spread well past it. It would have to be floating soon. Perhaps it was floating now, the mate realized; they were all swimming, and would be carried downstream at the same rate, and the slope across the river was completely hidden by fog, so it was not easy to tell who or what was moving. It was the ship. It was afloat. It was easy to reach, fortunately; but it was not merely drifting along with the swimmers. The wind was toward the rock fall here, too, and the Bree was being carried very slowly toward the slope as the balloon basket had done. For just a moment the mate thought of making sail; then he realized that the wind was toward the rocks and the depth too shallow to lower centerboards and sail effectively across it. With only ten men aboard, rowing would be futile. Almost futile. Maybe they could keep her away from the rocks long enough to get the radio back aboard — no, they were already leaving that equipment upstream. Dondragmer ordered four of his crew back overboard. “Get the radio, and start taking it downstream. We’re not very far from the end of the rock fall, now; maybe when we get there the heat will ease off and the wind change. If it doesn’t, well, the ship’s a lot bigger than the balloon basket, and we may be able to paddle it so the rafts catch in a space too narrow to let us through.” The crewmen obeyed. One of those remaining behind raised another point. “Will the rafts hold together if we catch her across a passage that way?”

“I don’t know. Do any extra lashing you can between the outboard rafts before we hit. There aren’t enough of us to keep her off, we’ll soon be in the fog, and it can’t be far from there to the rocks — it seems to be formed by methane hitting them and boiling. I’m surprised the wind doesn’t let us see the edge of the fall; the captain could, further up.” The ship had enough cordage to keep them all busy for the next few minutes. The mate saw his swimming party reach shore and head back upstream to where he could still see the communicator. The downstream party was still in sight as well. The river seemed to be growing even wider there, but its members were staying ashore for faster travel. The mate had time to think as he lashed. His thoughts rather paralleled the captain’s; where did all this methane come from? Unlike Barlennan, he came up with a plausible explanation. The original river had been fairly deep. If it had been well filled with fallen rock, it would have to spread over more ground, or travel faster, or both. But this idea, as the Flyers had often warned was likely to be the case, gave rise to more questions. If the methane were being displaced by the rocks, why was it flowing toward them? There was at the moment no way to ask the customers and, of course, no certainty that they would be able to answer. He would have to do more thinking himself. And just now there was no time to do that. They were into the fog. Dondragmer silently berated himself for leaving to chance something he might have controlled. Even the few men now on board could have paddled to turn the cluster of rafts so that its longer side was toward the rocks, and thus improve its chance of catching rather than being swept between rocks and out of daylight and under— He hadn’t been thinking of under . Deliberately. Luck had been with them, as it turned out, but the mate still felt stupid. They didn’t touch sidewise, but the starboard bow raft of the cluster hit first on a rock barely above the surface. The after portion swung counterclockwise as the current kept pushing inward. The aft starboard raft struck, harder than anyone liked, on a huge slab which tilted up out of sight in the fog. The midships section continued to push shoreward briefly, but one aspect of the ship’s basic design proved its salvation. Ropes stretched, rafts along the starboard side heaved, and the Bree came to rest with bow and stern pressed firmly against equally firm rocks and with another fragment of the fall under her just forward of amidships. While the rocks stayed there, so would the Bree . At the moment, with the darkness farther in easily visible even with the fog, this was a relief. Dondragmer gave no one time to think. He ordered one of the men overboard with the longest light line aboard. “Bend this around you. We’ll fasten the other end to the ship. Get to the bottom and start shoreward, taking the line with you. Try not to get washed downstream. If you run out of line before you reach shore — you probably witt — surface and try to spot landmarks which will let you know where you are and how far downstream we’ve traveled. Then do your best to keep there and yell for the others. We should still be in hearing for them. If you make contact, tell them to bring the radio as close to this place as they can.”