Hal Clement - Still River

“A little, Jen, but actually we’re not using it. Once we were sure it existed, we decided in favor of the stream. I know it’s bound to take us down, but there must be a limit to that, and when we find its base level—underground lake or ocean, or Molly’s ice, or whatever—we should be able to choose among winds reaching that region. The strongest will have the best chance of leading through passages big enough for us.”

“Do I see Molly’s thinking behind that?”

“Not entirely. There is also biology to check.”

“Of course. I should have thought. I’m about to take Joe’s new machine upwind to the edge of the present storm area and start looking for more ways into your cavern system. Charley will take Joe back to the tent and then do a similar search with the boat—we’ll try to coordinate so as not to duplicate effort too much.”

“Good.” Molly was really relieved for a moment. “I’m glad Joe can get back to his maps.”

“I don’t think that would be wise just yet” came the Nethneen’s voice.

“Why not?” asked several people at once.

“I have been thinking. It would be better, I am sure, if I stayed in the shop and made yet another mapping robot—possibly two. I haven’t been able to forget Charley’s prediction about the failure of this boat, though he would never supply us with his reasoning; and in any case it would seem better for all three of us up here to be in a position not only to locate possible entrances to your cavern system but to enter them. This craft is far too large for that.”

“Far too large for any entrance we’ve seen so far—all one of them,” pointed out Molly.

“Far too large for any passages likely to connect the caves, big as some of the latter are. I can accept big holes if they’re really kames, but I see no reason to suppose that all the connections between them will be ship-size. Do you really expect to…”

“I don’t know what to expect, but by all means make your extra bus!” exclaimed Carol. “When Molly and I get out of here, she and Jenny and I will all want to spend a lot of time in the caverns, and rather than ride one of these things we’re on now, I’d rather…”

“Good point,” Molly and Jenny cut in simultaneously. “But Joe,” the Human went on, “don’t stay away from your own work too long. I hate to see you kept away from it by all this.”

“It’s getting done, even when I can’t watch it,” the Nethneen pointed out calmly. “The longer I have to wait between looks, the more easily I can spot new trends when I do see it. You young people just keep alive, and don’t worry about me.”

“All right, Uncle.” Molly knew the translators would handle the word and did not worry about how Joe or the others would take it. All four of their species used figurative speech, she knew.

Anyone who saw Charley’s reaction to the exchange might have wondered briefly, but the Kantrick was alone, and his silence was not long enough to attract attention.

“We’re past the place where Molly iced her robot,” Carol reported. “New territory from now on.”

“Cave or tunnel?” This was Jenny.

“I’d vote for cave. The river has spread out a lot and is flowing very fast—no walls or ceiling…”

“A lot of noise, considering the neighborhood,” Molly supplemented. “Rapids—rocks in the stream, some of them loose enough to be rolled by it. At least some of this can be blamed on water erosion. Jenny—?”

“Water?”

“Pardon. Ammonia. Stream erosion. If either of us falls off now, Carrie, we’ll never make good fossils; there won’t be any bone fragments big enough to recognize. It’s getting steeper, too; we’re really heading downhill. I shouldn’t have called these lazy swirls rapids; there isn’t enough gravity to move anything rapidly. Should we maybe go by the side of this thing instead of right over it?”

“Then how could they damage your bodies, as you suggested?” asked Charley.

“A rock my own size has inertia, whatever it may lack in weight. You know that as well as I do; are you trying to be funny?”

The Kantrick made no answer, and Carol referred back to Molly’s earlier suggestion.

“I suppose we should, though I was enjoying it. Have you ever been on Topaz? That’s planet two of the brighter School sun, Fire. It’s a wonderful place for being physical. Decent gravity and pressure—a little high for you in the latter, but you could probably stand it—and there’s even oxygen in the air. I don’t know why I’ve never seen a Human there. There’s a wilderness park where I’ve spent hundreds of hours canoeing with my Others. Real white water. No really big 1: kes or oceans; like Jenny’s world, of course. You can’t have a lot of ammonia with free oxygen, but the life is active enough to keep rivers full. Jen’s been there with us, and likes to swim while we paddle. You’ll have to come some time, with your Others. We’ll get away from over this stream for now; A little homesickness is good for me, but since my Others aren’t here I may as well stick to the job.”

The eyes of the two explorers met briefly. Molly smiled as images of Rovor and Buzz flashed across her mind, and Carol’s grotesque features twisted in an expression that might have had the same meaning.

“I know what you mean,” the Human said softly on private channel, “but it’s just as well my son isn’t here. He’d think it was fun to dive in merely because his father and I had said it wasn’t safe.”

“An independent thinker? Congratulations.”

“Thanks. We’re an independent species from early childhood. The thinking comes later. Let’s get these rapids out from under us; they’re getting even louder and scarier.”

“And prettier.” Carol maneuvered the robot to one side, however, and changed the subject. “Vegetation everywhere, if it really is plant life. I wish we dared go slower. We could be missing a lot.”

“I’ve been thinking about that. It’s spring in this hemisphere, as you said a little while ago; maybe we’re running into seasonal changes—the storms, streams filling and emptying, life or something like it visible one moment and not the next. What we saw when the upper cave was dry may have been the last of the season’s growth, wiped out right afterward by the flooding. In any case, there has to be a whole ecology, and we can’t expect to examine every species. We’ll find more, but let’s not worry about missing a few items. What we need are Joe’s new machines, so we can do it in more comfort and carry more of the stuff we need.”

“Which means we need to get back to the boat. I’m in favor of that, but I still think tracing this river to its end will give the others their best chance of finding us.”

“Or of providing you with information that will let you find yourselves.” If the remark had been made by Charley, Carol might have found fault, but she agreed with Jenny.

“I wonder how far down you are now,” the Rimmore continued. “I’ve been monitoring Joe’s receivers, and there’s no sort of signal coming back any more. You were at least three kilometers below the surface, making no allowance for refraction, the last time we got a reading.”

“And we’re heading down very steeply now,” added Carol. “I’m surprised the stream can flow so fast in this gravity; it makes me wonder if my time sense is losing track.”

“How about wind?” asked the Kantrick.

“I really don’t know how much of what we feel is due to our own motion,” Molly replied. “We should probably stop for a check some time, but that can wait awhile, I’d think. Jenny, you’re outside now. Have you left the storm area yet?”

“Yes. It’s a smallish cyclone only a couple of hundred kilometers across—rather surprising, considering Enigma’s rotation. Maybe the topography is making eddies. I’m in sunlight, as far as the clouds permit, over very hilly ground.”