Hal Clement - Close to Critical

In one sense, the trial was a perfect success; that is, Nancy remained conscious as long as the drop lasted. In another, however, there was something lacking. This lay in the failure of the drop to last long enough. Suffering the assault of heat radiation both from Nancy within and the fire ahead, the thing abruptly faded out in a final surge of turbulence, leaving her in full view.

This turned out to be less of a catastrophe than it might have been. For three or four seconds after the vanishing of her concealment Nancy stood perfectly still; then she called out, making no effort to direct her voice away from the light ahead, “Johnny! Here, quick!”

Her companion leaped forward, taking a little but not much less care to dodge raindrops, and came to a halt at her side.

She had stopped perhaps five yards from the edge of a nearly vertical-sided pit, fully two miles across. Her first few seconds of silence had been spent in telling herself how lucky she was that her shelter had not lasted a few seconds longer; then the blast of radiant heat coming from the floor of the crater, a scant hundred feet below, forced her to admit the matter was hardly one of luck. It could be seen from this vantage point that no raindrops at all approached the area except those which drifted up the slope of the hill from outside. The floor glowed visibly all over, and numerous patches were of almost dazzling brilliance. These last looked suspiciously like liquid, though the liquid possessed a remarkably sharp and well-defined surface.

Raeker, or even Easy, would have recognized a volcano at once; but the phenomenon was completely outside the experience and education of Fagin’s pupils. Raeker had noted, in passing, Nick’s earlier reference to the conical shape of the high hill he had reported; the geologists had also paid some attention to it, and even placed it on the list of things to be investigated more fully; but that was as far as matters had gone. Nick had said nothing to suggest that the thing was active—or rather, nothing the men had recognized as such evidence; he had mentioned wind. As a matter of fact, it had not been nearly so violent when he had passed, some three terrestrial months before. Only its size and shape had been worthy of note.

“You know,” John remarked after some minutes of silence, “this would be a wonderful place for a village. We wouldn’t need to keep fires going.”

“How about food?” countered Nancy. “The plants growing on this dark rock are different from the ones we’re used to; maybe the cattle wouldn’t eat them.”

“That would be easy enough to find out—”

“Anyway, that’s not the assignment just now. This light obviously isn’t what we’re looking for, though I admit it’s interesting. We’d better get on with the job.”

“It’s raining,” John pointed out, “and there was no suggestion that we should search through the night as well as by day. This would seem a perfect place to sleep, at least.”

“That’s true enough—” Nancy’s agreement was interrupted suddenly. Some three hundred yards to their left, a segment of the pit’s edge about fifty yards long and ten or fifteen deep cracked loose with a deafening roar and plunged downward. In that gravity even Tenebra’s atmosphere was an ineffective brake, and a good ten or fifteen thousand tons of well-cemented volcanic detritus made its way effortlessly through the red-hot crust of nearly solid lava at the foot of the ledge. The results left no doubt about the liquid state of the hotter material—or would have left none had the two explorers still been watching. They weren’t; they were on their way downhill in the direction from which they had come before the mass of rock was completely detached. Even as he ran, John had time to feel lucky that the incident had waited to happen until Nancy had agreed with him about what a good camping spot the place was. Needless to say, he did not mention this aloud. Even John was not bothering to dodge raindrops at the moment, much less talk on irrelevant subjects.

They covered nearly a mile down the slope before stopping. The light was still quite ample to permit reading the maps, and it took only a few minutes to convince them both that this was indeed the tall, conical hill which Nick had reported. With this settled, however, neither could quite decide what to do about it. The natural urge was to return to the camp to report the phenomenon to Fagin; against this, however, lay the fact that they had another assignment to complete, which involved life and death.

“This can wait a day,” John pointed out. “We can perfectly well camp right here, search our areas tomorrow, and then go back as was planned. We can’t drop everything for one new discovery.”

“I suppose not,” agreed Nancy with some slight reluctance, “but we certainly can’t camp here. There isn’t enough fuel for a dozen hours on this black stone, to say nothing of the rest of the night; and the raindrops are starting to get clear.”

“That I had noticed,” replied John. “We’d better get going, then. Just a minute; there’s enough here to make a torch. Let’s get one started; we may be a little pressed for time later.”

Nancy agreed with this observation, and ten minutes later they were on their way once more with John carrying a glowing torch and Nancy the material for two more, all that the vegetation within convenient reach afforded. They headed toward a region which their maps showed as having slightly higher hills than usual, so as to avoid finding themselves in a lake bed before morning. Both were becoming a trifle uneasy, in spite of Nick’s earlier success at all-night travel; but they were distracted once more before getting really worried.

Again a light showed ahead of them. It was harder to perceive, since the brilliance from behind was still great, but there was no doubt that a fire of some sort was on one of the hilltops ahead of them.

“Are you going to sneak up on this one the way you did on the other?” queried John.

Nancy glanced at the now dangerously clear raindrops and did not condescend to answer. Her companion had expected none, and after a moment asked a more sensible question.

“What about this torch? If we can see that fire, anyone near it can see us. Do you want to put it out?”

Nancy glanced upward—or rather, shifted her attention in that direction by a subtle alteration in the positions of her visual spines, which acted rather like a radio interferometer system, except that they were sensitive to much shorter wavelengths. “We’d better,” she said. “There’s plenty of light to dodge the drops.”

John shrugged mentally and tossed the glowing piece of wood under a settling raindrop. The two slipped up toward the distant light.

It was an ordinary fire this time, they could see as they approached. Unfortunately, there was no one visible near it, and the vegetation was not dense enough to hide anyone of ordinary size unless he were deliberately seeking to use it for the purpose. This suggested possible trouble, and the two explorers circled the hill on which the blaze stood with the most extreme caution, looking for traces of whoever had been there in the past few hours. Not having the tracking skill of the cave dwellers, they found no signs of people. After two full circuits and some low-voiced discussion, they were forced to conclude that either whoever made the fire was still on the hill but remarkably well hidden, or else the fire itself had been started by something a trifle unusual. The latter hypothesis would probably not have occurred to them had it not been for their recent experience with the volcano. There seemed no way, however, to decide between the possibilities by reason alone. Closer investigation was in order and, with a constant expectation of hearing the sharp voice of Swift echoing about them, they set to it. Very carefully, examining every bush, they went up the slope.