Hal Clement - Noise

When he emerged from the cabin at last, the storm was still visible to the west, blocking any view of both Kaihapa and the suns, but was no longer dropping hail on the vessel. Background thunder was still louder than usual, but now caused Mike less trouble because of his improving skill with Finger. ’Ao had returned to the hull leaving the seedling in the water, but the latter’s tow line was still slack. Keo, out of sight and presumably under water, had evidently not yet reestablished the sea-anchor system. Wanaka had three control lines in her right hand and two in her left, and seemed to be giving them her full attention. Mike glanced around, noted the usual number of waterspouts within sight, but was pretty sure that none was a menace at the moment. Experience had taught him that Keo’s present job would probably take only a few minutes.

He was right. The mate suddenly appeared beside the deck and gestured rather casually, and the captain promptly signaled to Hoani to take over the lines. ’Ao started to take up her usual position beside him, but was gestured back to the hull and set to another task—Mike, his attention focused on the lines, couldn’t see just what. He wasn’t sure just how happy the sudden increase in trust made him feel. He had flown sailplanes on Earth, and would always vividly remember his first solo landing. However, the watch ended with no further troubles.

The seedling continued to grow, sometimes several centimeters in a single day, more often slowly enough to need careful measurement. The two little hulls were now separated slightly as a developing deck appeared between them and grew. After a few days, Mike risked a question.

“I don’t see any sign of a new cabin. We make do with this one, I take it?”

Wanaka nodded. “That would be a whole set of separate seeds. Cabin and air lock unit, air equipment, sails, furnishings. Much more expensive ones, too. And much more trouble getting them to stop growth just at the right stage in each case to let them fit together properly.”

“We have them, I suppose.”

“Many of them. The most important. The first three I mentioned, plus the kumu’rau . We’ll have to deploy that pretty soon, by the way, at the rate we’ve been using oxygen. It’ll complicate handling the sea anchor, and probably cost us some latitude one way or the other, and we’ll be really vulnerable to waterspouts while it’s out, but that’s not a choice.”

Hoani nodded. He had seen many times, before the journey had become so exciting, the strip of pseudolife that didn’t look particularly like either a tree or a leaf but would at least have been green with chlorophyll if either of the suns had produced much green light. It was nearly ten meters wide and more than a hundred and fifty long, and trailed behind Malolo during times when the suns were highest and Wanaka had forced herself to admit that oxygen was as important as new cargo and hence to accept the very low sailing speed demanded by its production. Just now it was reeled up out of the sea at the aft end of the cabin. Mike had been wondering how long they could do without it, but had been reluctant to ask. He knew they had left Muamoku with a very large supply of oxygen cartridges, presumably fully charged, but didn’t know what “very large” meant in terms of person-hours of breathing.

Except, of course, that there was no way for it to be a definite number. He himself would have been tempted to top the oxygen supply off every day, but now realized that with the “tree-leaf” deployed they were much more vulnerable to waterspouts. The captain had now decided that the risk had to be taken.

Each of the next ten days, for the four hours when the suns were at their highest, the tree-leaf—Mike had decided that kumu’rau was probably an evolved blend of Hawaiian and Maori—was paid out. Fortunately it trailed in the opposite direction from the sea-anchor system, and didn’t directly interfere with the control lines; but since it was affected by the surface current, its deployment did add problems to handling these.

Mike was not excused from this complication of control duty after the first day, which he spent watching Wanaka and Keo very closely indeed. Thereafter he was on his own, and to his own slowly decreasing surprise made no serious mistakes. His self-confidence, along with his fluency in Finger, was growing, though there was still very little risk of his reaching the dangerous overconfidence level.

It was ’Ao who was now totally relieved from the sea-anchor duty. Her muscular strength was not really up to it, and there was much else to keep her busy now that Mike needed practically no advice. Actually, everyone except Mike was mostly keeping alert for waterspouts while the oxygen-maker was deployed. Malolo was little more maneuverable at such times than when the sea-anchor system was out of action. Whenever one of these whirling towers of spray drew close enough to worry Wanaka or Keo when Mike was on the lines, one of them would take over without comment and ’Ao, without orders, would take the growing shiplet out of the sea and lash it quickly but securely onto the remaining hull. Mike wondered what would be done when it grew too big for this procedure.

He trusted the professional skill of his hosts, but knew there were conditions that even the most competent of seamen couldn’t handle; and he was pretty sure that the captain, good as she was at keeping her feelings to herself, was becoming more and more worried about something.

It was not the oxygen. After ten days of using the kumu’rau the cartridges were as full as when the sortie had started, and she made no attempt to hide her relief the last time it was reeled in.

Also, the problem was probably not their location. While it was not really practical to take a noon sight by instrument on the twin suns, it was evident that the ship’s latitude had changed. They were too far south. While even Hoani could see that Malolo had drifted some distance eastward, since the sister planet Kaihapa was clearly nearer the western horizon, longitude mattered very little. The likelihood of having to circumnavigate a parallel of latitude in order to find a given city went without saying in Kainui seamanship. It was not a difficulty of knowing the ship’s longitude, which could be worked out celestially with enough effort; the eclipses of the two suns provided time information. However, knowing that of the ship’s intended port with no effective long-range communication was entirely another matter. A marine chronometer is useful only if there is a Greenwich, and it stays put.

Trouble did eventually come, of course, but Mike never found out whether it was the one worrying the captain.

Even the procedure difficulties threatened by the growing replacement ship failed to become serious. Well before the seedling was too heavy to ride the remaining hull without sinking it gunwale down, it had become far too bulky for even Keo and the captain together to hoist, regardless of ingenious improvisations of cordage. This seemed to bother no one. When a waterspout threatened, the growing craft was now simply moored as securely as the supply of rope would permit and allowed to float by itself. This, of course, made the duty on the sea-anchor lines too complicated for a beginner, and Mike was sometimes rather glad to see a spout developing nearby. It saved him labor, and he had certainly not yet become overconfident.

On the second of these occasions, however, one of the mooring lines became slack—no one ever found who was to blame, but ’Ao and Mike could share the happy confidence that it wasn’t their fault. This allowed a minor collision, and one of the growing keels was badly cracked, while a scratch penetrated all four protective coats of the older hull. Now even Mike was informed enough to worry, though the scratched area was repainted using appropriate seeds as soon as the waves permitted.