Hal Clement - Still River

Fortunately the drop was small, as they went in that area, and there were no others really close by. Charley insisted later that this had not been a matter of luck alone; he had not wanted to waste time and energy boiling large amounts of water, or having his experimental results involved with other drops. Whatever the actual reason, the fact was fortunate.

The test laser was not a weapons-grade device but was quite capable of vaporizing small volumes of metal or rock. The present liquid target was more transparent, which meant that more of the material had to be traversed by the beam for a given amount of energy to be absorbed; but, as it turned out, very little energy was needed. The drop—not just the liquid in the path of the beam, but the entire drop-exploded violently.

The shock wave flattened other drops and reduced them to spray, but did not detonate them. Its most critical effect was on Charley’s robot. This was supported and driven by the usual field effects, and guided and navigated by an inertial system. This, unless the guidance computer was set to respond to additional factors such as the approach of other vehicles or radar information, did its fusion-powered best to hold the machine in whatever position the driver had placed it.

The mapper did not, therefore, move under the impulse of the shock wave. Portions of its shell did yield to the pressure, some sections peeling away entirely and flying out of sight, some collapsing inward. Charley found himself, when he recovered from several seconds of daze, pressed down by what had been outer hull onto the ring-shaped seat cushion that normally surrounded his mouth. The polymer had bent to conform rather well to his own armored contours, but not perfectly; his forward arm and right leg seemed to be broken. One of his eyes, the front one, was also out of action. He could not localize the pain well enough to guess at the overall personal damage, but it certainly hurt.

“Charley! Don’t!” the Rimmore called again.

He found himself able to answer clearly enough for his translator to handle.

“I’m afraid I did. It wasn’t water, was it?”

“It might have been, but there were other possibilities. What happened?”

Charley reported as completely as he could.

“I see three possibilities—or rather, two and a combination,” Jenny started thoughtfully. “Either it was…”

“Jenny! Charley’s hurt! What can we do?” It was Carol, not Molly, who had interrupted. The Human was not too surprised at this; there is a difference between potential danger and actual damage.

“We consult medical information, get Charley to describe his damage in as much detail as possible, and tell him what to do for himself if he doesn’t already know,” the chemist replied calmly. “If he is actually on your river, you two may be able to do more shortly; listen carefully to any information I transmit.”

“If he is on our river, we’d better find out what’s in it besides water,” the Shervah answered. “Your theories are important, after all; pardon my interruption.”

“I’ll get back to that later. Charley, are you losing body fluids at any serious rate?”

“Not as far as I can tell. I’m cracked in several places—leg, arm, probably right front upper body quadrant—but sac doesn’t seem to be ruptured. I can’t see my own head, of course, and one eye is out, so there is some damage there; but again, I don’t seem to be leaking. Remember, I can’t see through my armor; it’s just inference. A bad leak would have me unconscious by now.”

“Then from the summary of your physiology I have here, your main danger is starting to heal broken limbs without having them properly set.”

“Right. If I can free myself from this robot’s outer shell, I can take care of most of the trouble—the armor itself will do for splints, if I can find something with the leverage I need to straighten the limb sections.”

“Will your robot travel?” asked Joe.

“It’s still hanging where all this happened; its power must be on. At the moment I can’t reach or nip the keys. I’ll report when I can. I’m starting to feel stronger; maybe I can get out from under this envelope in a few minutes.”

“I’d better come in for you,” Joe started.

“Come in where? Stay where you are until we can figure out a useful action. Send those little robots back to their mapping, and if they all disappear we’ll have to live with it and think of something else; but there’s nothing else useful you can do from there right now.”

“True, Jenny. I was getting ahead of my own thinking; thanks. If I can locate that river—or those rivers—the real problem is to get us back together and back to the boat”

“Get to it. You’ll find me.”

“I hope you’re better with that guess than the one about the boat’s not lasting. Are you ever going to tell us why you thought that?”

“Probably not. Just start mapping, please. I’m hurting.”

“The robots are on the way.”

“Charley, can you move yet?” called Molly.

“Yes, a little. The hull stuff that is pinning me down is very thin and should be easy to bend. I just don’t have much leverage. There, I’m getting away from the pedestal and can move toward the rear of the mapper. I see what happened. The front part of the body was pushed back and wrapped around me, and most of the side and rear covering just peeled away like an outgrown shell. The interior doesn’t seem to have suffered. I can twist this bent stuff out of the way and get at the keys. Wait a minute while I run them through. Yes. Good. I seem to have full control, and even my radar is working, though the lights are gone except for interior instrument ones.”

“I hope your circuitry is still protected. With those floating drops, you might wind up in worse trouble than we did,” Carol pointed out.

“True. My claw light is working—I’ll fly away from the neighborhood right away—if I can. My front arm doesn’t work, and turning my body is awkward with a leg out of action, too, and I won’t be able to nip keys as well with the rear hand.”

“Why not?” Molly couldn’t help asking. “Your front and rear look the same to me—I could never see why you cared which way you were going. Joe doesn’t seem to.”

“Your right and left look the same to me, but you seem to prefer to use your right,” replied Charley. “Ouch! If we must talk, let’s stick to essentials. I’ll have to be careful moving; if that broken arm or leg shell cuts inner sac, it could be bad. There; I’m turned around. I’ve bent a piece of the hull sheeting to hold the light, since I can’t do that and nip keys with the same digits. I’m traveling. Down, judging by large-drop motion. I trust that is the end of this river; traveling without them may be slow, but I feel better that way from now on.”

“You’re not going to wait for us, then?” Carol asked innocently.

“I don’t think so. We don’t know this is your river, after all, and I wouldn’t be much help to you now if we did meet. If it is, maybe you’ll catch up to me; I won’t be going very fast. Jenny, I wouldn’t mind hearing now what you think I ran into that looked so much like water.”

“As I said, two guesses and a combination. I’d vote for hydrogen peroxide, but it might have been hydrazine or a mixture of the two. The first is most likely to have been really concentrated in that reflux system; as I recall, hydrazine gets to a constant-boiling mixture with water while still pretty dilute. Also, if there had been hydrazine in the river, it would have reacted with the peroxide pretty completely as the lat-ter’s concentration got high.”