Hal Clement - Close to Critical

Then they began to get an impression that it was coming from a point above their level, and after another half hour they were both quite sure of this. The fact was hard to understand; Fagin had said that the bathyscaphe couldn’t fly because it was broken, and there had been no mention of a hill—at least, not of anything unusual in that respect—in the description of the machine’s environment. As a matter of fact, they recalled, it had been stated to lie at the foot of a hill.

Then John remembered Nick’s tale of a remarkably high hill in the region, and the two got out their maps once more. It seemed possible though far from certain, after careful checking, that the light was on the hill; but if that were the case it seemed to dispose of any remaining chance that they had found the bathyscaphe. Since the only other possibility they could envision was that Swift’s people were there with a fire, a slight problem developed.

It would be raining before long, and travel without torches would be impossible. If the area ahead were actually a camp of Swift’s cave dwellers, approaching it with torches would simply be asking for capture. Of course, the chief might have accepted Fagin’s offer, so that they would technically be allies; but from what John and Nancy knew of Swift they didn’t want to take the chance. From one point of view, there was no reason to approach at all, since they were searching for the bathyscaphe rather than scouting the cave men; but this phase of the matter didn’t occur to either of them. If it had, they would probably have insisted that they weren’t sure the light wasn’t from the crippled machine. Anyway, they kept trying to plan a method of approach to the light.

It was Nancy who finally worked it out. John didn’t like the plan and didn’t trust it. Nancy pointed out truthfully that she knew more physics than he did, and even if he didn’t know what she was talking about he ought to take her word for it. He replied, equally truthfully, that he might be a mathematician rather than a chemist but even he knew enough about rain not to accept ideas like hers uncritically. Nancy finally won her point by the simple process of starting toward the light alone, giving John the choice of coming or staying behind. He came.

Raeker would have liked to hear that argument. He had named the little creatures who had emerged from the stolen eggs quite arbitrarily, and still had no idea of the actual gender of any of them. Nancy’s display of a human-feminine characteristic would have been fascinating if not very conclusive.

John watched the sky uneasily as they strode onward. Inwardly he knew perfectly well that the rain was not due for a while yet; but the mere fact of Nancy’s defiance of the phenomenon made him abnormally conscious of it. By the time the first drops actually appeared far above, they were close enough to the light to see that something lay between them and the actual source—it was shining from behind a barrier of some sort, presumably a hill.

“Should we go over, or around?” John asked, when this fact became evident. “If we go up, we’ll run into the rain sooner.”

“That’s a good reason for doing it,” retorted Nancy. “If it is the cave people they won’t be expecting us from that direction, and you’ll see all the sooner that I’m right. Besides, I’ve never been up a really high hill, and Nick said this one was two or three hundred feet tall—remember?”

“I remember, but I’m not as sure as you seem to be that this is the hill he was talking about.”

“Look at your map!”

“All right, I know we’re close to it, but his notes were pretty rough; you know that as well as I do. There never was time to make a decent map of the country he covered, after he got back. We’ve been fighting or moving practically ever since.”

“All right, you needn’t make a thesis out of it. Come on.” She led the way without waiting for an answer.

For some time there was no appreciable rise in the general ground level, though the number of ordinary hillocks remained about as usual. The first implication that Nancy might be right about the nature of the hill was a change in the nature of the ground underfoot. Instead of the usual feldspar-rich granitic rock, heavily pitted with solution cavities, a darker, much smoother material became predominant. Neither of them had ever seen fresh lava, since Nick had brought back no specimens, and it took time for their feet to get used to it.

The rain was getting very close to the surface now. There was no difficulty in dodging drops, since there was more light coming from ahead than Altair gave at high noon; the trouble was that Nancy was not bothering to dodge them. Theoretically she was right enough; they weie still cloudy with oxygen bubbles, and her body heat turned them into perfectly breathable air, but it took a while for John to follow her example. Habits are as hard to break for Tenebrites as for human beings.

Gradually the slope of the dark rock began to increase. They were on a hill, and the light was close ahead, now. Rocks were silhouetted sharply against it, not more than a mile in front. Nancy stopped, not because of the rain but to take a final look around; and it was then that they both noticed something else.

In the first place, the raindrops were not falling straight; they were drifting horizontally as they descended, drifting in the same direction as the two were traveling. That was reasonable when one stopped to think; they had known about convection and advection currents almost as long as they could remember. It was the speed that was remarkable; the drops were heading toward the fire at a good two miles an hour. The air current that impelled them could actually be felt —and that was a major hurricane, for Tenebra. If the thing ahead was a fire, it was a bigger fire than Fagin’s pupils had ever lighted or ever seen.

“If Swift lighted that, he must have touched off a whole map section,” remarked John.

Nancy turned to him abruptly. “Johnny! Remember what happened last night, when Nick got the Teacher away from the caves? He did light fires over a good part of a section! Do you suppose they could still be burning, and have spread like this?”

“I don’t know.” John stood still and thought for a moment or two. Then he referred to the map, easily legible in the brilliant light. “I don’t see how it could be,” he said at length. “We’re a lot closer to the caves than we were this morning, but not that close. Besides, the clear rain late at night should have put any fire out if there was no one to tend it.”

“But if it were big enough, maybe it would stir up the air so there was always enough oxygen for it—feel this wind on our backs. Have you ever known anything like it?”

“No. Maybe you’re right. We can go on and see, though; I still think it’s more likely to be Swift. Are you still going to try that idea of yours?”

“Of course. It’s all the better, with the wind carrying the drops as fast as this.”

“I hope you’re as right as you are reasonable.” The two went on, somewhat more slowly since it was necessary to follow a rather tortuous path to keep their goal in sight among the drops. These were now reaching the surface in great numbers and remaining liquid, except for those parts most closely exposed to the body heat of the two travelers. It took a little longer than might have been expected, therefore, to get within two hundred yards of the rocks ahead, which from the absence of anything but light beyond them appeared to mark the top of the bill. At this point, Nancy decided that stealth was in order; so she brought the scary part of her plan into operation.

Finding an exceptionally large and still cloudy rain drop drifting downward at no great distance, she deliberately placed herself so as to be enveloped by it as it landed. Naturally, the bottom portion of the fifty-foot spheroid was obliterated at once by her body heat; but further descent of the drop finally hid her from view. The great, foggy blot of liquid began to follow the general pattern of activity of the others, moving slowly toward the light; and Nancy did her best to follow. This was not as easy as it might have been, even though the gas around her was perfectly breathable, since with no view of her surroundings it was nearly impossible to judge the rate of drift of the raindrop. The wind was some help, but not enough, and several times John could see her outline as she came too close to the edge of the volume of fog. He stayed where he was, not considering it cowardly to see how the experiment turned out before he tried it himself.