Hal Clement - Heavy Planet

“Will you remind them of that?” asked Dondragmer. “The leader is named Stakendee. He doesn’t have enough of the human language to do any good. He may very well be depending too heavily on you and your equipment for warning. I’m afraid I took for granted, without saying much about it, that your set would help warn him when we were planning the search. Please tell him that it is strictly an indirect communicator between him and me.” The boy’s response was considerably longer in coming than light-lag alone would explain. Presumably he was carrying out the request without bothering to acknowledge its receipt. The captain decided not to make a point of the matter; Hoffman was very young. There was plenty else to keep Dondragmer busy, and he occupied himself with this, filing the unfinished conversation until Benj’s voice once more reached the bridge. “I’ve been in touch with Stak and told him what you asked. He promised to take care, but he’s not very far from the Kwembly yet, still among the stones; they give out a little way upstream, you remember. He’s still on the map, I think, though I can’t really tell one square yard of that rock garden from another. It’s either smooth ice or ice with cobblestones sticking up through it, or occasionally cobblestones with no ice between them. I don’t see how they’re going to search it very effectively. Even if you climb on the highest rock in the neighborhood, there are a lot of others you can’t see beyond. The helicopters aren’t very big, and you Mesklinites are a lot smaller.”

“We realized that when we sent out the party,” Dondragmer answered. “A really effective search will be nearly impossible among the stones if the missing are dead or even helpless. However, as you said, the stones give way to bare rock a short distance from here; in any case, it is possible that Kerv or Reffel could answer calls, or call for help themselves. Certainly at night one can be heard much farther than he can be seen. Also, whatever is responsible for their disappearance may be bigger or easier to spot.” The captain had a pretty good idea how Benj would answer the last sentence. He was right. “Finding whatever is responsible by having another group disappear wouldn’t put us much farther ahead.”

“It would if we actually learned what had happened. Keep in close touch with Stakendee’s party, please, Benj. My time is going to be taken up with other matters and you’ll learn whatever happens half a minute before I could anyway. I don’t know that those seconds will make much real difference but at least you’re closer to Stak in time than I am. “Also, I have to go outside now. We’re getting to a ticklish point in taking this metal bar off the hull. I’d bring one of the sets outside to keep in closer touch with you but I wouldn’t be able to hear you very well through a suit. The volume of these communicators of yours isn’t very impressive. I’ll give you a call when I’m back in touch; there’s no one handy to leave on watch here. In the meantime please keep a running log, in any way you find convenient, on what happens to Stakendee.” The captain waited just long enough to receive Benj’s acknowledgment, which did arrive this time, before making his way down to the lock and donning his air suit. Preferring an inside climb to an outside one, he took the ramps back to the bridge and made use of the small lock which gave onto the top of the hull: a U-shaped pipe of liquid ammonia just about large enough for a Mesklinite body. Dondragmer unsealed and lifted the inner lid and entered the three-gallon pool of liquid, the cover closing by its own weight above him. He followed the curve down and up again and emerged through a similar lid outside the bridge. With the smooth plastic of the hull curving down on all sides of him except aft he felt a little tense but he had long ago learned to control himself even in high places. His nippers Hashed from one holdfast to another as he made his way aft to the point where the few remaining refrigerator attachments were still intact. Two of these were the ones which extended entirely through the hull as electrical contacts, and were therefore the ones which caused Dondragmer the most concern. The others, as he had hoped, were coming out of the cruiser?s skin like nails; but these last would have to be severed, but severed so that they could be reconnected later on. Welding and soldering were arts which Dondragmer knew only in theory; he did know whatever procedure was to be used, it would certainly need stubs projecting from the hull as a starting point. The captain wanted to make particularly sure that the cutting would allow for this. The cutting itself, as he had been told, would be no trouble with Mesklinite saws. He carefully selected the points where the cuts were to be made and had two of his sailors get started on the task. He warned the rest to get out of the way when the bar was free. This meant not only down to the surface but well away from the hull. The idea was to lower the metal on the lock side, once it was detached, but Dondragmer was cautious about weights and knew that the bar might possibly not wait to be lowered. Even a Mesklinite would regret being underneath when it descended from the top of the hull, feeble as Dhrawn’s gravity seemed to them. All this had taken the best part of an hour. The captain was wondering about the progress of the foot party but there was another part of the melting project to check first. He reentered the ship and sought the laboratory, where Borndender was readying a power unit to fit the makeshift resistor. Actually there was little to be done; polarized sockets, one at one end of the block and one at the other, would provide direct current if the bar could be gotten into the holes and any changes needed to make a fit possible would have to be made on the bar rather than the power box. It took only a moment to make this clear to the captain, who looked for himself, decided the scientist was obviously right and made his way hastily back to the bridge. Only when he got there and tried to call Benj did he realize that he had never removed his air suit; talking to Borndender through his suit was one thing, talking to a human over the radio quite another. He stripped enough to get his speaking-siphon into the open and spoke again. “I’m back, Benj. Has anything happened to Stakendee?” He finished removing the suit while waiting for the answer, smoothed it, and stowed it close to the center hatchway. It didn’t belong there, but there wouldn’t be time to get it down to the rack by the main lock and return before Benj’s words. “Nothing really important, as far as I can tell, Captain,” came the boy’s voice. “They’ve walked a long way, though I can’t tell just how far; maybe three miles since you went, but that’s a guess. There has been no sign of either flier, and the only thing they or I have seen which might possibly have affected either of them has been an occasional patch of cloud a few hundred feet up; at least that’s what Stak guesses, I can’t see well enough myself, drifting back toward the Kwemb/y. I suppose if you accidentally flew into a big cloud you might get disoriented and if it was low enough you?d crash before you could straighten out; there aren?t any blind flying instruments on those things, are there? It?s hard to believe they?d do such a thing. Of course, if they were keeping their eyes on the ground instead of their flying? but none of the clouds we?ve seen so far is anywhere near big enough to give them time to lose their way, Stak says.? Dondragmer was inclined to share this doubt about clouds being responsible; he would have doubted it even had he not had reason for another opinion. An upward glance showed that no clouds had yet reached the Kwembly ; the stars twinkled everywhere. Since Benj had said clouds were coming toward the cruiser, the ones Stakendee had seen must have been at the edge of the pattern and much farther to the west when the fliers were up. This might mean nothing as far as Kervenser was concerned; he could have been a long, long way from the Kwembly. Also Reffel had probably encountered them. Dondragmer brought his attention back to Benj, who had not paused for a reply. “Stak says the stream bed is going uphill noticeably, but he didn’t tell me how he knew; just that they’d gone up several feet since leaving the Kwembly. ” Pressure change, Dondragmer assumed; it was always more noticeable in the suits. Just climbing around on the hull made a difference in suit tightness which could be felt. Besides, the stream which had carried the cruiser here had been flowing fairly fast; even allowing for Dhrawn’s gravity, its fall must be fairly great. “The only other real change is the nature of the bottom. They’re well away from the cobbles. It’s mostly bare rock, with patches of ice in the hollows.”