Hal Clement - Heavy Planet

“I don’t know. Near the side they might find us sooner; it would depend on where they come through first, if they manage to do it at all. If they don’t, I can’t see that it will make any difference at all. I wish I knew what being frozen into a block of ice would do to a person.”

“Well, someone will know before long,” said Takoorch. “Maybe. Remember the Erket.”

“What has that to do with it? This is a genuine emergency.”

“Just that there are a lot of people who don’t know what happened there.”

“Oh, I see. Well, personally I’m going back to the middle and think while I can.” Beetchermarlf was surprised. “What’s there to think about? We’re here to stay unless someone gets us out or the weather warms and we thaw out naturally. Settle down.”

“Not here. Do you suppose that running the drivers, with no treads on them, would make enough friction with anything to keep the water nearby from-”

“Try it if you like. I wouldn’t expect it, with no real load on them even at their fastest. Besides, I’d be afraid to get close to them if they’re really turning up speed. Face it, Tak, we’re under water, water, not regular ocean, and when it freezes we’re going to be inside it. There’s just nowhere else to-oh!”

“What?”

“You win. We should never stop thinking. I’m sorry. Come on.” Ninety seconds later the two Mesklinites, after some trouble in wriggling through the knife slits, were up inside the punctured air cell, safely out of the water.

Dondragmer, dismissing as negligible the chance that one of his missing helmsmen might be directly underneath, had ordered his scientists to set up the test drill near the main lock and get a sample of the ice. This established that the puddle in which the Kwembly was standing had frozen all the way to the bottom in at least one spot. It might be hoped that this would not apply directly under the hull, where neither heat nor ammonia could escape so rapidly; but the captain vetoed the suggestion of a slanting bore into this region. That did seem to be the most likely whereabouts of the missing helmsmen. They had been at work there and it was hard to imagine how they could have failed to see the freeze coming if they had been anywhere else. There was no obvious way to get in touch with them, however. The Kwembly ’s plastic hull would transmit sound, of course; rapping would have solved the problem if it had not been for the mattress. On the off chance that hull sounds might be heard even through its bulk, Dondragmer ordered a crewman to go from bow to stern on the lowest deck, tapping with a pry bar every few feet. The results were negative, which meant inconclusive. There was no way to tell whether there was no one alive below to hear or no penetration of the sound or simply no way for those below to reply. Another group was outside working at the ice but the captain had already learned that progress would be slow. Even with Mesklinite muscular strength little was being accomplished. Tools about the size of a human machinist’s center punch, wielded by fifteen-inch, twenty-pound caterpillars, would take a long time to get around some two hundred and fifty feet of hull circumference to an unknown depth. They would take even longer if detailed chipping around drivers, trucks, and control lines were to be necessary, as seemed likely. Besides all this, the second helicopter was aloft again with Reffel again at its controls. The communicator was still aboard and the human beings were examining as carefully as Reffel himself the landscape revealed by the little machine’s lights. They were also cursing as heartily as the pilot the length of Dhrawn’s nights; this one had well over six hundred hours yet to go and, until the sun rose, really quick and effective searching would be impossible. To be helpful to either Mesklinite eyes or the video pick-up of the communicator, the lights had to be held to a rather narrow beam, covering a circle only a few hundred feet across. Reffel was flying a slow zigzag course which swept this circle back and forth across the valley as he moved slowly westward. At the station far above, the televised image on his screen was being recorded and reproduced for the benefit of topographers. These were already working happily on the structure of an intermittent stream valley under forty Earth gravities. Of the search for the missing Kervenser, little could be expected for some time; but pure information was coming in so no one was complaining, not even the Mesklinites. Dondragmer was not exactly worried about his first officer and helmsman, since he couldn’t really worry. It would be fair to say that he was concerned: but he had done all he could about the missing crewmen and having done it, his attention had turned elsewhere. He had two principal things on his mind. He would have liked information about how soon the ice was likely to melt, compared with how soon another flood might arrive. He would also have given even more for a workable suggestion on how to get rid of the ice quickly and safely. He had expressed both wishes to the human beings as well as to his own scientists, though he had made it clear to the latter that he was not demanding a crash program. The search for ideas could be combined with, or even subordinated to, the basic research they were carrying on. Dondragmer was not exactly cold-blooded, but his sense of values included the notion that even one’s final act should be a useful one. The human reaction to this remarkably objective and inhumanly calm behavior was mixed. The weather men and planetologists took it for granted. Most of them probably weren’t even aware of the Kwemb/y’ s predicament, much less of the missing Mesklinites. Easy Hoffman, who had stayed on watch after bringing Barlennan up to date as Aucoin had directed, was not surprised. If she had any emotional reaction so far, it was one of respect for the captain’s ability to avoid panic in a personally dangerous situation. Her son felt very differently about it. He had been released temporarily from duty in the aerology lab by McDevitt, who, as a tactful and sympathetic person, had been aware of the friendship developing between the boy and Beetchermarlf. Benj had become a fixture in the communication room as a result. He had watched quietly while arrangements were being made by Dondragmer to dispatch the helicopter and the ice-chipping crews. He had even been somewhat interested in the exchange between the human and Mesklinite scientists. McDevitt had been a little reluctant to risk more weather predictions, feeling that his professional reputation had taken jolts enough recently, but he promised to do his best. When all these matters had been settled and Dondragmer seemed willing to do nothing but lie on his bridge and wait on events, the boy grew uneasy. Patience, the closest human equivalent to the Mesklinite reaction now being displayed, was not yet one of his strong points. For some minutes he shifted uneasily in his seat before the screens, waiting for something to happen. Finally, he could restrain himself no longer. “If no one has any immediate material to send, is it all right for me to talk to Don and his scientists?” he asked. Easy glanced at him, and then at the others. The men shrugged or otherwise gestured indifference, so she nodded. “Go ahead. I don’t know whether any of them are in a mood for casual chatter, but the worst they’ll do is tell you they aren’t.” Benj didn’t waste time explaining that he was not going to indulge in chatter, casual or otherwise. He switched his microphone to Dondragmer’s bridge set and began to talk. “Don, this is Benj Hoffman. You have nothing but a bunch of sailors chipping away the ice at the Kwembly’ s bow. There is a lot of energy in your power units, more than a planetful of Mesklinites could put out by muscle in a year. Have your scientists thought of using converter output either to run that test drill for moving ice, or in some sort of heater? “Second, are your sailors just removing ice, or are they specifically trying to get down underneath to find Beetchermarlf and Takoorch? I know it’s important to get the Kwembly loose, but the same ice will have to be taken out sometime anyway. It seems to me there’s a good chance that some of the water under the ship hasn’t frozen yet, and that your two men are still alive in it. Are you tunneling, or just ditching?” Some of the human listeners frowned slightly at the boy’s choice of words, but no one saw fit to interrupt or even comment. Most of those who heard glanced at Easy and decided against saying anything which might be interpreted as criticism of her son. Some, as it happened, did not feel critical anyway; they had wanted to ask similar questions but had not quite wanted to be heard at it. As usual in conversations between the station and Dhrawn, Benj had plenty of time while waiting for the answer to think of other things he might have asked or said, and of better ways in which he might have put the things he did say. Most of the adults knew from experience what was going on in his mind at this point; some were amused; all were to some degree sympathetic. Several bet that he would not be able to resist the temptation to send a reworded version of his message before the answer came back. When Dondragmer’s response came from the speaker with Benj still silent no one actually cheered, but those who knew Easy best could read and understand the satisfaction in her expression. She had not dared to bet, even with herself. “Hello, Benj. We’re doing all we can, both for the helmsmen and my first officer. I’m afraid there is no way to apply ship’s power to any of the tools. The converters produce electric current and also supply rotating torque fields to the truck motors, as I am sure you know, but none of our ordinary equipment can use this, just the helicopters, some of the research equipment in the laboratory, and the lights. Even if we could work out a way to apply the drive motors to digging, we can?t get at them; they?re all under the ice. You must remember, Benj, that we deliberately chose to remain as independent as possible of really complex equipment. Just about everything we have on the planet which we couldn?t make ourselves is directly concerned with your research project.? Ib Hoffman was not present to hear that sentence, which was unfortunate; later he spent a long time trying to make sure of its exact wording from his son?s memory. “I know that, but—” Benj fell silent; none of the words he wanted to say seemed to have ideas under them. The lights, he knew, could not be used as heaters; they were solid state electroluminescent devices, not arcs or resistance bulbs. They had, after all, been designed not only to last indefinitely but to operate in Dhrawn’s atmosphere, with its free oxygen and enormous pressure range, without killing the Mesklinites. If Beetchermarlf had realized this he might have wasted less time, though he might not have accomplished any more. “Can’t you, can’t you just run the current from a converter through some heavy wires, and melt the ice with the heat? Or even run it straight through the water? There must be plenty of ammonia left — it would surely conduct.” Again there was a pause, while Benj hunted for flaws in his own suggestions and the message flashed its way across emptiness. “I’m not sure I know enough about that sort of physics, though I suppose Borndender and his men would,” Dondragmer replied doubtfully. “More to the point, I don’t know what we’d use for wires and I don’t know what current would flow. I know that when the power units are connected to regular equipment like lights or motors there is automatic safety control but I have no idea of how that works or whether it would work on a simple, direct, series circuit. If you’ll find out from your engineers what sort of risk we’d be running, I’ll be glad of the information but I still don’t know what we’d use to carry the current. There just isn’t much metal in the Kwembly. Most of our maintenance supplies are things like rope and fabric and lumber. Certainly there’s nothing that’s meant to carry heavy electrical current. You may be right about using the ice itself as a conductor, but do you think it would be a good idea with Beetchermarlf and Takoorch somewhere under it? Although I can see they wouldn’t be right in the circuit, I’m still a little uncertain that they’d be safe. There again one of you people could probably help out. If you can, if we can get enough detailed information from you to plan something really promising, I’ll be glad to try it. Until that happens, I can only say we’re doing all we can. I’m as concerned about the Kwembly, and Kervenser, and Beetchermarlf, and Takoorch as you can possibly be.” The captain’s closing sentence was not entirely true, though the error was not intentional. He did not really grasp how a friendship could become at all close in a short time and without direct contact between the parties; his cultural background included neither an efficient mail service nor amateur radio. The concept of a microphone relationship developing emotional weight may not have been completely strange to him: he had, after all, been with Barlennan years before when Charles Lackland had accompanied the Bree by radio across thousands of miles of Mesklin’s oceans; still, real friendship was, to him, in a different category. He had been only conventionally regretful at the news of Lackland’s death years later. Dondragmer knew that Benj and the younger helmsman had been talking to each other a great deal, but he had not overheard much of their conversation and would probably not have fully understood the feelings involved even if he had. Fortunately Benj did not realize this, so he had no reason to doubt the captain’s sincerity. However, he was not satisfied with either the answer or the situation. It seemed to him that far too little was being done specifically for Beetchermarlf; he had only been told about this. He could not participate in the help. He could not even see very much of it happening. He had to sit and wait for verbal reports. Many human beings both more mature and more sedate by nature than Benj Hoffman would have had trouble enduring that situation. His feelings showed clearly enough in his next words, as far as the human hearers were concerned. Easy made a half-completed gesture of protest. Then she controlled herself; it was too late, and there was always the chance that the Mesklinite would not read as much into the words and tone as the speaker’s mother had. “But you can’t just sprawl there and do nothing!” Benj exclaimed. “Your men could be drowning this very second. Do you know how much air they had in their suits?” This time temptation won. Realization of what he had said caught up with him within seconds, and in less than half a minute he had what he hoped were better chosen words on their way to Dhrawn. “I know you’re not doing nothing but I just don’t see how you can simply wait around for results. I’d have to go outside myself and chip ice or something, but I can’t, up here.”