Hal Clement - Close to Critical

“Where’s my son?” he asked.

“Asleep.” Easy would not normally have been so short.

“Well, you’ll probably do. Did you hear that they’ve found out what caused the wind?”

“Yes; I gather it’s a volcano. I went to sleep just after that. Has anyone come up with more news?”

“Not exactly news. It’s occurred to some of those human fortune tellers that your ship may be blown a little closer to the volcano each night, until you’re in serious trouble. What does your friend Swift think about that? He’s supposed to be able to predict what his planet is going to do, and he seems to have been able to find you each morning so far.”

“We’ll, we certainly can’t get there for several days; we can’t see the light from the volcano from here.”

“You mean you can’t; it’s what the natives can see, and what they think, that counts. Have you asked Swift?”

“No. I didn’t know about this until just now. Anyway, I’m not worried; if they’d seen the light they’d have mentioned it—they’d have thought it was the robot. We can’t possibly reach the volcano for several of Tenebra’s days —certainly not by tomorrow.”

“Who cares about just tomorrow? How you human beings ever achieved even the civilization you have is a mystery to me. Intelligent people plan ahead.”

“Intelligent people don’t usually jump to conclusions, either,” snapped the girl, in the first display of temper she had shown since the accident. “I’m not worried beyond tomorrow, because by the end of that day we’ll be away from here. Please tell Mr. Sakiiro to have the shuttle ready to meet us.” She turned her back and walked—stalked, rather—out of the field of view; and Aminadabarlee was too startled even to resent the discourtesy.

Easy was awake again by the time Nick reached the bathyscaphe. He had had no trouble finding it; the glow from its lights was quite visible from the coast. The wind was blowing straight toward the light, but Nick and his friends knew nothing of the volcano at the tune and didn’t have to worry about whether they were heading for the right light. They came ashore, shouldered the raft, and headed for their beacon.

Fagin and the other four pupils had arrived before them; travel on foot was a good deal faster, even for the robot, than by the decidedly clumsy raft. Swift seemed to be in a very tolerant mood. He didn’t actually greet the newcomers effusively, but he was talkative enough. He took for granted that they were his people—people who had gone a trifle astray, and didn’t always know just how to behave, but who might be expected to grow up properly if given time. As long as they treated him as chief, it seemed likely that there would be no trouble.

Within a few minutes of the arrival of John, Nancy, Oliver, Dorothy, and the robot, he had demanded to be shown how to make a fire. Easy, with her two-second advantage in reaction time, told John to go ahead before Raeker even knew the order had been given. John, knowing that the person hi the bathyscaphe was one of his teacher’s race, obeyed without question. He took out his friction gear and had a blaze going in two or three minutes.

Swift then demanded to be shown how to work the device himself; and by the time Nick, Betsy, Jim and Jane arrived with the raft the chief had succeeded in lighting his own fire and was in the highest of spirits.

This was more than could be said for anyone on the Vindemiatrix. Aminadabarlee was more than ever convinced that human beings were an ugly-tempered, uncooperative lot; and just now he had more than the usual reason for his opinion. Every human being in the ship was furious with the Drommian, taking their lead from Easy Rich. A night’s sleep had not restored her usual sunny temper; she was indignant at the alien’s insults of the evening before, and not only refused to explain to Aminadabarlee her justification for saying she would escape within a Tenebran day, but would say nothing more about it to anyone for fear he would hear. It was a childish reaction, of course; but then, Easy was a child, for all her adult speech and mannerisms. Her father had been asked to persuade her to talk; he had stared at her imaged face in the screen for a moment, but no word was spoken. Something must have passed between them, though, for after a moment he turned away and said, “Please have Mr. Sakiiro get the shuttle ready to meet the bathyscaphe. I understand it takes some time to install and adjust outside boosters.” He promptly left the room, ignoring the questions hurled at him, and disappeared into his own quarters.

“What do we do?” The question was not in the least rhetorical; the geophysicist who put it was a close friend of the Rich family.

“What he says, I should think,” answered another scientist. “Rich seems to be sure the kid knows what she’s talking about.”

“I know he’s sure; but does she? He’s her father; she’s all the family he’s had for ten years, and he’s done a marvelous job of bringing her up, but he sometimes overestimates her. She convinced him, just then, that everything is all right; but I don’t— we don’t know. What do we do?”

“We do just what he asked,” pointed out another. “Even if the kid’s wrong, there’s no harm hi having the shuttle ready. Why is everything so shaken up?”

“Because we know what will happen to Easy and her father if she’s wrong,” replied the geophysicist. “If she’s been speaking from her own knowledge, fine; but if that ten-legged weasel made her lose her temper and shoot her mouth off so as to justify her actions—” He shook his head grimly. “She believes her own words now, all right, and so does her father. If they’re disappointed—well, the kids have stayed alive down there so far because of the self-control of the Rich family.” He ended the discussion by cutting in another phone circuit and transmitting Rich’s request to the engineers.

Raeker had been eating and, occasionally, sleeping in the observation room; he’d forgotten by now how long he had been there. The robot was rather out of things, but he could still watch. His pupils seemed to have been re-absorbed into Swift’s tribe, and were being told what to do alternately by the chief himself and by Easy in the bathyscaphe. Nobody was asking Fagin what to do or how to do it, but in spite of this things were happening almost too fast for Raeker to keep track of them. He knew that Easy had had an argument with Aminadabar-lee, though he wasn’t clear as to the details; he had been told about her promise to be off the ground the next day, but had no more idea than anyone else how she expected to do it. He had had his share of Aminadabarlee’s temper, for the Drommian had not by any means been silenced by Easy’s flare-up, and had spent some time pointing out to Raeker the foolishness of separating his pupils from their own culture, and how much more would have been learned about Tenebra if contact had been made with Swift’s people in the first place. Raeker had not actually been rude, but his answers had been rendered vague by his preoccupation with events on the ground, and he had thereby managed to offend the lutroid more than ever. He knew it, but couldn’t bring himself to worry seriously about the prospect of severed relations between Sol and Dromm.

He knew in a general way what people were doing on the ground, but he couldn’t understand all of it, and no one bothered to tell him. It never occurred to Raeker that this might have been at Easy’s request; that she might be going to extremes to make sure that nothing like useful information got back to the Vindemiatrix and the being who had angered her so. He could only watch, photograph, record what conversation he could hear, and try to interpret what went on.