Hal Clement - Heavy Planet

At two hundred miles, the barge was just visible as a starlike object reflecting Lalande 21185’s feeble light. Benj had watched the vessel as it pulled up to that distance and moved into what its pilot considered a decent stationkeeping orbit, but neither he nor the pilot had discussed technical details. It was so handy to be able to hold a conversation without waiting a full minute for the other fellow’s answer that Benj and Beetchermarlf had simply chattered. These conversations were becoming less and less frequent. Benj was really back at work now and, he suspected, making up for lost time. Beetchermarlf was often too far away on practice flights to talk at all, and even more frequently too occupied to converse with anyone but his instructor. “Time to turn it over, Beetch,” the boy ended the present exchange as he heard Tebbetts’ whistling from down the shaft. “The taskmaster is on the way.”

“I’m ready when he is,” came the reply. “Does he want to use your language or mine this time?”

“He’ll let you know; he didn’t tell me. Here he is,” replied Benj. The bearded astronomer, however, spoke first to Benj after looking quickly around. The two were drifting weightless in the direct-observation section at the center of the station’s connecting bar, and Tebbetts had taken for granted that the barge and his student would be drifting alongside. All his quick glance caught was the dull ember of a sun in one direction and the dimly lit disc of Dhrawn, little larger than Luna seen from Earth, in the other. “Where is he, Benj? I thought I heard you talking to him, so I assumed he was close. I hope he isn’t late. He should be solving intercept orbits, even with nomographs instead of high-speed computers, better than that by now.”

“He’s here, sir.” The boy pointed. “Just over two hundred miles away, in a 17.8-minute orbit around the station.” Tebbetts blinked. “That’s ridiculous. I don’t think this heap of hardware would whip anything around in that time at a distance of two hundred feet, let alone that many miles. He’d have to use power, accelerating straight toward us—”

“He is, sir. About two hundred g’s acceleration. The time is the rotation period of Mesklin, and the acceleration is the gravity value at his home port. He says he hasn’t been so comfortable since he signed up with Barlennan, and wishes there were some way to turn up the sunlight.” The astronomer smiled slowly. “Yes. I see. That does make sense. I should have thought of it myself. I have some more practice exercises for him here, but that’s about as good as any of them. I should do more of that sort of thing. Well, let’s get at it. Can you stay to check my language? I think I have the Stennish words for everything in today’s work, and space is empty enough so that his mistakes and mine should both be relatively harmless, but there’s no need to take chances.”

“It’s too bad the Kwembly couldn’t be salvaged after all,” remarked Aucoin, “but Dondragmer’s crew is doing a very good and effective study of the area while they’re waiting for relief. I think it was a very good idea to send the Kalliff after them with a skeleton crew and let them work while they waited, instead of taking them back to the Settlement in the barge. That would have been pretty dangerous anyway, until there are practiced Mesklinite pilots. The single landing near the Kuembly to get the two helmsmen, and a direct return to space while they were trained, was probably the safest way to do it. “But now we have this trouble with the Smof. At this rate we’ll be out of cruisers before we’re half way around Low Alpha. Does anyone know the Smof’s commander the way Easy knows Dondragmer? You don’t, I suppose, Easy? Can anyone give a guess at his ability to get himself out of trouble? Or are we going to have to risk sending the barge down before those two Mesklinites are fully trained?”

“Tebbetts thinks Beetchermarlf could handle a surface landing now, as long as it wasn’t complicated by mechanical emergencies,” pointed out an engineer. “Personally I wouldn’t hesitate to let him go.”

“You may be right. The trouble is, though, that we certainly can’t land the barge on an ice pack, and not even the barge can lift one of those land-cruisers, even if there were a way of fastening them together without an actual landing. Beetchermarlf and Takoorch may as well continue their training for the moment. What I want as soon as possible, Planetology, is the best direction and distance for the Smof’s crew to trek if they do have to abandon the cruiser, that is, the closest spot where the barge could land to pick them up. If it’s close to their present location, don’t tell them, of course; I want them to do their best to save the cruiser, and there’s no point in tempting them with an easy escape.” Ib Hoffman stirred slightly, but refrained from comment. Aucoin, from one point of view, was probably justified. The administrator went on, “Also, is there definite word on the phenomenon that trapped the Kwemb/y? You’ve had specimens of the mud, or whatever it is, that Beetchermarlf brought up, for weeks now.”

“Yes,” replied a chemist. “It’s a fascinating example of surface action. It’s sensitive to the nature and particle size of the minerals present, the proportions of water and ammonia in the lubricating fluid, the temperature, and the pressure. The Kwembly’s weight, of course, was the main cause of trouble; the Mesklinites could walk around on it, in fact, they did, safely enough. Once triggered by a pressure peak, the strength went out of the stuff in a wave—”

“All right, the rest can serve for a paper,” Aucoin nodded. “Is there any way to identify such a surface without putting a ship onto it?”

“Hmm. I’d say yes. Radiation temperature should be information enough, or at least, it would warn that further tests should be made. For that matter, I wouldn’t worry about its ever getting the barge; the jets would boil the water and ammonia out of such a surface safely before touchdown.” Aucoin nodded, and passed on to other matters. Cruiser reports, publication reports, supply reports, planning prospectuses. He was still a little embarrassed. He had known his own failing, but like most people had excused it, and felt sure it wasn’t noticeable. But the Hoffmans had noticed it, maybe others had. He’d have to be careful, if he wanted to keep a responsible and respected job. Alter all, he repeated firmly to himself, Mesklinites were people, even if they looked like bugs. Ib Hoffman’s attention wandered, important though he knew the work to be. His mind kept going back to the Kwembly, and the Smof, and to a welldesigned, well-built piece of diving gear which had almost killed an elevenyear-old boy. The reports, punctuated by Aucoin’s sometimes acid comments, droned on; slowly Ib made up his mind.

“We’re getting ahead,” remarked Barlennan. “There was good excuse for taking the vision sets out of the Kwembly, since she was being abandoned, so we’ve been able to work on her with no restrictions. We could use Reffel’s helicopter, since the humans think it’s lost too. Jemblakee and Deeslenver seem to feel that the cruiser can be back in running state in another day.” He glanced at the feeble sun, almost exactly overhead. “The human chemists were certainly helpful about that mud she was in. It was funny how the one who talked to Dee about the stuff kept insisting that he was only guessing, while he made suggestion after suggestion. It’s too bad we couldn’t tell him how successful most of his ideas were.”

“Self-doubt seems to be a human trait, if it’s safe to make such a sweeping remark,” replied Guzmeen. “When did this news get in?”