Hal Clement - Mission of Gravity

About every fifty days a check was made on the position of the transmitter — there was only one moving now; another had been left with the group at the hoist — and a new direction computed. High-precision work was required, and occasionally some doubt was felt about the accuracy of a given fix. When this happened Barlennan was always warned, and left to his own discretion. Sometimes, if the Earthmen did not sound too doubtful of their own work, he would go on; at others, he would wait for a few days to give them a chance. for a better fix. While waiting he would consolidate his position, redistributing pack loads and modifying the food rations when it seemed necessary. He had hit upon the idea of trail blazing almost before starting, and a solid line of pebbles

marked their path from the edge. He had the idea of eventually clearing all the stones from a path and heaping them on each side, thus making a regular road; but this would be later, — when trips back and forth between the grounded rocket and the supply base became regular.

The fifty miles passed slowly under their many feet, but pass it finally did. The men, as Lackland said, had done all they could; to the best of their ability to measure, Barlennan should now be standing beside the stranded machine. Both the vision set and the captain’s voice clearly informed him that no such state of affairs existed, which did not surprise him at all.

„That’s the best we can do, Barl. I’ll swear, knowing our math boys, that you’re within six miles of that gadget, and probably a good deal less. You can organize your men better than I for a search. Anything we can do we certainly will, but I can’t imagine what it might be at this point. How do you plan to arrange matters?”

Barlennan paused before answering. A six-mile circle is an appalh’ng area to search when visibility averages three or four yards. He could cover territory most rapidly, of course, by spreading out his men; but that raised to the point of near certainty the chance of losing some of them. He put this point up to Lackland.

„The rocket itself is about twenty feet tall,” the man pointed out. „For practical purposes your vision circle is therefore larger than you say. If you could only get up on one of those larger boulders you’d probably see the ship from where you are — that’s what’s so annoying about the whole situation.”

„Of course; but we can’t do that. The large rocks are six or eight of your feet in height; even if we could climb their nearly vertical sides, I would certainly never again look down a straight wall, and will not risk having my men do so.” „Yet you climbed that cleft up to the plateau.” „That was different. We were never beside an abrupt drop.” „Then if a similar slope led up to one of these boulders, you wouldn’t mind getting that far from the ground?”

„No, but — hmmm. I think I see what you’re driving at. Just a moment.” The captain looked at his surroundings more carefully. Several of the great rocks were nearby; the highest, as he had said, protruded some six feet from the hard ground. Around and between them were the ever present pebbles that seemed to floor the whole plateau. Possibly if Barlennan had ever been exposed to solid geometry he would not have made the decision he did; but having no real idea of the volume of building material he was undertaking to handle, he decided that Lackland’s idea was sound.

„Well do it, Charles. There’s enough small rock and dirt here to build anything we want.” He turned from the radio and outlined the plan to the sailors. If Dondragmer had any doubts about its feasibility he kept them to himself; and presently the entire group was rolling stones. Those closest to the selected rock were moved — close against it, and others against these, until a circle of bare ground began to spread outward from the scene of Operations. Periodically a quantity of the hard soil was loosened by harder pincers and spread onto the layer of small rocks; it was easier to carry and filled more space — until the next layer of stone tamped it down.

Progress was slow but steady. Some indication of the time it took may be gained from the fact that at one point part of the group had to be sent back along the blazed trail for further food supplies — a thing which had been unnecessary in the eight-hundred-mile walk from the cleft; but at last the relatively flat top of the boulder felt the tread of feet, probably for the first time since the inner energies of Mesklin had pushed the plateau to its present elevation. The ramp spread down and to each side from the point of access; no one approached the other side of the boulder, where the drop was still sheer.

From the new vantage point Lackland’s prediction was fulfilled — after months of travel and danger, the goal of the expedition was in sight. Barlennan actually had the vision set hauled up the ramp so the Earthmen could see it too; and for the first time in over an Earth year, Rosten’s face lost its habitual grim expression. It was not much to see; perhaps one of the Egyptian pyramids, plated with metal and placed far enough away, would have looked somewhat like the blunt cone that lifted above the intervening stones. It did not resemble the rocket Barlennan had seen before — in fact, it did not greatly resemble any rocket previously built within twenty light-years of Earth; but it was obviously something that did not belong to Mesklin’s normal landscape, and even the expedition members who had not spent months on the monstrous planet’s surface seemed to feel weight roll from their shoulders.

Barlennan, though pleased, did not share the abandon that was approaching party intensity on Toorey. He was better able than those whose view depended on television to judge just what lay between his present position and the rocket. This appeared no worse than what they had already crossed, but it was certainly no better. There would no longer be the Earthmen’s guidance, either; and even with the present vantage point, he could not quite see how the party was to maintain its line of march for the mile and a half that they would have to travel. The men did not actually know the direction now, so their method would not work — or would it? He could tell them when the sun lay in the right direction; after that they could call him each time it passed through the same bearing. For that matter, one man could stay here and give the same information without bothering the Flyers — but wait; he had only one radio now. It could not be in both places at once, for the first time Barlennan really missed the set that had been left with the river-dwellers.

Then it occurred to him that he might not need a radio. True, the air did not carry sound so well here — it was the only aspect of the thinner atmosphere of the plateau that the sailors had noticed at all — but the Mesklinite voice, as Lackland had remarked, was something that had to be heard to be believed. The captain decided to try it; he would leave one man here on the lookout platform, whose duty would consist of hooting with ‘all the energy the muscles around his swimming-siphon could muster each time the sun passed straight above the gleaming cone that was their goal. The trail would be blazed as before so that he could follow when the others arrived.

Barlennan outlined this idea to the group. Dondragmer pointed out that on the basis of past experience they might even so go too far to one side, since there would be no way of making fixes as the Earthmen had done to correct cumulative errors; the fact that the watcher’s voice did not sound from directly opposite the sun at any time would mean nothing in this echo-rich neighborhood. He admitted, however, that it was the best idea so far, and did stand a good chance of bringing them within sight of the rocket. A sailor was chosen, therefore, to man the observation post, and the trip was resumed in the new direction.