Hal Clement - Mission of Gravity

Time passed, as it had before, first hundreds and then thousands of days. To the Mesklinites, long-lived by nature, its passage meant little; to the Earthmen the voyage gradually became a thing of boredom, part of the regular routine of life. They watched and talked to the captain as the line on the globe slowly lengthened; measured and computed to determine his position and best course when he asked them to; taught English to or tried to learn a Mesklinite language from sailors who sometimes also grew bored; in short, waited, worked where possible, and killed time as four Earthly months — nine thousand four hundred and some odd Mesklinite days — passed. Gravity increased from the hundred and ninety or so at the latitude where the canoe had sunk to four hundred, and then to six, and then further, as indicated by the wooden spring balance that was the Bree’s latitude gauge. The days grew longer and the nights shorter until at last the sun rode completely around the sky without touching the horizon, though it dipped toward it in the south. The sun itself seemed shrunken to the men who had grown used to it during the brief time of Mesklin’s perihelion passage. The horizon, seen from the Bree’s deck through the vision sets, was above the ship all around, as Barlennan had so patiently explained to Lackland months before; and he listened tolerantly when the men assured him it was an optical illusion. The land that finally appeared ahead was obviously above them too; how could an illusion turn out to be correct? The land was really there. This was proved when they reached it; for reach it they did, at the mouth of a vast bay that stretched on to the south for some two thousand miles, half the remaining distance to the grounded rocket. Up the bay they sailed, more slowly as it finally narrowed to the dimensions of a regular estuary and they had to tack instead of seeking favorable winds with the Flyer’s help, and finally to the river at its head. Up this they went too, no longer sailing except at rare, favorable intervals; for the current against the blunt faces of the rafts was more than the sails could usually overcome, broad as the river still was. They towed instead, a watch at a time going ashore with ropes and pulling; for in this gravity even a single Mesklinite had a respectable amount of traction. More weeks, while the. Earthmen lost their boredom and tension mounted in the Toorey station. The goal was almost in sight, and hopes ran high.

And they were dashed, as they had been for a moment months before when Lackland’s tank reached the end of its journey. The reason was much the same; but this time the Bree and its crew were at the bottom of a cliff, not the top. The cliff itself was three hundred feet high, not sixty; and in nearly seven hundred gravities climbing, jumping and other rapid means of travel which had been so freely indulged at the distant Rim were utter impossibilities for the powerful little monsters who manned the ship.

The rocket was fifty miles away in horizontal distance; in vertical, it was the equivalent, fot a human being, of a climb of nearly thirty-five — up a sheer rock wall.

The change of mind that had so affected the Bree’s crew was not temporary; the unreasoning, conditioned fear of height that had grown with them from birth was gone. They Still, however, had normal reasoning power; and in this part of their planet a fall of as much as half a body’s length was nearly certain to be fatal even to their tough organisms. Changed as they were, most of them felt uneasy as they moored the Bree to the riverbank only a few rods from the towering cliff that barred them from the grounded rocket.

The Earthmen, watching in silence, tried futilely to think of a way up the barrier. No rocket that the expedition possessed could have lifted itself against even a fraction of Mesklin’s polar gravity; the only one that had ever been built able to do so was already aground on the planet. Even had the craft been capable, no human or qualified non-human pilot could have lived in the neighborhood; the only beings able to do that could no more be taught to fly a rocket than a Bushman snatched straight from the jungle.

„The journey simply isn’t as nearly over as we thought.” Rosten, called to the screen room, analyzed the situation rapidly. „There should be some way to the plateau or farther slope whichever is present — of that cliff. I’ll admit there seems to be no way Barlennan and his people can get up; but there seems to be nothing preventing their going around.” Lackland relayed this suggestion to the captain.

„That is true,” the Mesklinite replied. „There are, however, a number of difficulties. It is already getting harder to procure food from the river; we are very far from the sea. Also, we have no longer any idea of how far we may have to travel, and that makes planning for food and all other considerations nearly impossible. Have you prepared, or can you prepare, maps with sufficient detail to let us plan our course intelligently?”

„Good point. I’ll see what can be done.” Lackland turned from the microphone to encounter several worried frowns. „What’s the matter? Can’t we make a photographic map as we did of the equatorial regions?”

„Certainly,” Rosten replied. „A map can be made, possibly with a lot of detail; — but it’s going to be difficult. At the equator a rocket could hold above a given point, at circular velocity, only six hundred miles from the surface — right at the inner edge of the ring. Here circular velocity won’t be enough, even if we could use it conveniently. We’d have to use a hyperbolic orbit of some sort to get short-range pictures without impossible fuel consumption; and that would mean speeds relative to the surface of several hundred miles a second. You can see what sort of pictures that would mean. It looks as though the shots will have to be taken with long-focus lenses, at extremely long range; and we can only hope that the detail will suffice for Barlennan’s needs.”

„I hadn’t thought of that,” admitted Lackland. „We can do it, though; and I don’t see any ‘alternative in any case. I suppose Barlennan could explore blind, but it would be asking a lot of him.”

„Right. Well launch one of the rockets and get to work.” Lackland gave the substance of this conversation to Barlennan, who replied that he would stay where he was until the information he needed was obtained.

„I could either go on upstream, following the cliff around to the right, or leave the ship and the river and follow to the left. Since I don’t know which is best from the point of view of distance, well wait. I’d rather go upstream, of course; carrying food and radios will be no joke otherwise.”

„All right. How is your food situation? You said something about its being hard to get that far from the ocean.”

„It’s scarcer, but the place is no desert. We’ll get along for a time at least. If we ever have to go overland we may miss you and your gun, though. This crossbow has been nothing but a museum piece for nine tenths of the trip.” „Why do you keep the bow?”

„For just that reason — it’s a good museum piece, and museums pay good prices. No one at home has ever seen, or as far as I know even dreamed of, a weapon that works by throwing things. You couldn’t spare one of your guns, could you? It needn’t work, for’that purpose.”

Lackland laughed. „I’m afraid* not; we have only one. We don’t expect to need it, but I don’t see how we could explain giving it away.” Barlennjui gave the equivalent of an understanding nod, and turned back to his own duties. He had much to bring up to date on the bowl that was his equivalent of a globe; the Earthmen, throughout the trip, had been giving him bearing and distance to land in all directions, so he was able to get most of the shores of the two seas he had crossed onto the concave map.