Authors: Poul Anderson
“You really will go through with it, then, sir?”
“Yes. I’m doubtless as crazy as you are. No. Crazier, because at my age I should know better. But if the two of us can lick this country—Say, my name is Jack.”
Filled with aircraft motor and all, the wagon moved more sluggishly than on its trial trips … at first. Then the downgrade steepened, the brake began to smoke, and for a time Danny was terrified that his load would run out of control and smash to ruin. But he tethered it safely above high-water mark. Thereafter he had to keep watch while O’Malley walked back to the bus carrying the data tapes, which must not be risked. Danny could have done this faster, but the man said it was best if he spent the time studying the waters and how they behaved.
He also found chances to get to know the plants better, and the beasts, odors and winds and well-springs, the whole forest wonderland.
Wavelets lapped further and still further above the place to which he had let the wheels roll. He felt a rocking and knew they were upborne. Into the portable transceiver he said: “I’m afloat.”
“Let’s go, then.” O’Malley’s was the voice drawn more taut.
Not that excitement didn’t leap within Danny. He recalled a remark of his comrade’s—”You’re too young to know you can fail, you can die”—but the words felt distant, unreal. Reality was raising the sail, securing the lift, taking sheet and tiller in hand, catching the breeze and standing out into the bay.
No matter how many modifications and rehearsals had gone in advance, the cart-turned-boat was cranky. It could not be otherwise. Danny knew sailing craft too well to imagine he would ever have taken something as jerry-built as this out upon Lake Olympus. The cat rig was an aerodynamic farce; the hull was fragile, ill-balanced, and overloaded; instead of a proper keel were merely leeboards and what lateral resistance the wheels provided.
Yet this was not High America. The set of mind which had decided, automatically, that here was water too hazardous for aircar or motorboat, had failed to see that a windjammer—built on the spot, involving no investment of machinery—possessed capabilities which would not exist in the uplands.
Here air masses thrust powerfully but slowly, too ponderous for high speed or sudden flaws, gusts, squalls. Here tide at its peak raised a hull above every rock and shoal except the highest-reaching; and, the period of Raksh being what it was, that tide would not change fast. An enormous steadiness surrounded the boat, enfolded it and bore it outward.
Not that there were no dangers! Regardless of how firm a control he had, it took a sailor who was better than good to work his way past reefs, fight clear of eddies and riptides, beat around regions against which the hovering man warned him.
Heaven was not leaden, it was silver. Lively little weather clouds caught the light of a half-hidden sun in flashes which gleamed off steel and violet hues beneath. The land that fell away aft was a many-colored lavishness of life; over the forest passed uncountable wings and a wander-song to answer the drumbeat of breakers ahead. The air blew full of salt and strength, it lulled, it whistled, it frolicked and kissed. To sail was to dance with the world.
Now came the barrier. Surf spouted blinding white. Its roar shook the bones. “Bear right!” O’Malley’s voice screamed from the transceiver. “You’ll miss the channel—bear right!”
Starboard,
Danny grinned, and put his helm down. He could see the passage, clear and inviting ahead. It was good to have counsel from above, but not really needed, in this place that was his.
He passed through, out onto the Gulf of Ardashir, which gives on the Uranian Ocean and thence on a world. Waves ran easily. The boat swayed in the long swell of them. So did the airbus, after O’Malley settled it down onto its pontoons. Still, this could be the trickiest part of the whole business, laying alongside and transferring freight. Danny gave himself the challenge.
When both vessels were linked, the man leaned out of his open cargo hatch and cried in glory, “We’ve done it!” After a moment, with no less joy; “I’m sorry. You have.”
“We have, Jack,” Danny said. “Now let me give you the instruments first. The motor’s going to be the very devil to shift across. We could lose it.”
“I think not. Once the chains are made fast, this winch can snatch along three times that load. But sure, let’s start with the lesser-weight items.”
Danny braced feet against the rolling and began to pass boxes over. O’Malley received them with some difficulty. Nevertheless, he received them. Once he remarked through wind and wave noise: “What a shame we can’t also take that remarkable boat back.”
Danny gazed at this work of his hands, then landward, and answered softly, “That’s all right.
We’ll
be back—here.”
PASSING THE LOVE OF WOMEN
After three hours of troubled sleep, Dan Coffin awoke to the same knowing:
They haven’t called in.
Or, have they?
his mind asked, and answered:
Unlikely. I gave strict orders I be told whenever word came, whatever it was.
So Mary’s voice has not reached us since dusk. She’s lost, in danger.
He forced himself to add:
Or she’s dead.
Forever stilled, that joyousness that ran from the radio to him especially? “Remember, Dan, we’ve got a date exactly three tendays from now. ‘Bye till then. I’ll be waiting.” No!
Understanding it was useless, and thinking that he ought to get more rest, he left his bunk. The rug, a cerothere hide, felt scratchy under his bare feet, and the clay floor beyond was cold. The air did surround him with warmth and sound —trillings, croakings, the lapping of waves, and once from the woods a carnivore’s scream —but he hardly noticed. Paleness filled the windows. Otherwise his cabin was dark. He didn’t turn on a light to help him dress. When you spend a lot of time in the wilderness, you learn how to do things after sunset without a fluoropanel over your head.
Weariness ached in him, as if his very bones felt the drag of a fourth again Earth’s gravity.
But that’s nonsense
, he thought. His entire life had been spent on Rustum. No part of him had ever known Earth—except his chromosomes and the memories they bore of billionfold years of another evolution—
I’m simply worn out from worrying,.
When he trod outside, a breeze ruffled his hair (as Mary’s fingers had done) and its coolness seemed to renew his strength. Or maybe that came from the odors it brought, fragrances of soil and water and hastening growth. He filled his lungs, leaned back against the rough solidity of walls, and tried to inhale serenity from this, his homeland. A few thousand human beings, isolated on a world that had not bred their race, must needs be wary. Yet did they sometimes make such a habit of it that there could be no peace for them ever?
The two dozen buildings of the station, not only the log shelters like his own but the newer metal-and-plastic prefabs, seemed a part of the landscape, unless they were simply lost in its immensity. Behind them, pastures and grainfields reached wanly to a towering black wall of forest. Before them, Lake Moondance murmured and sheened to a half-seen horizon; and above that world-edge soared mountains, climbing and climbing until their tiers were lost in the cloud deck.
The middle of heaven was clear, though, as often happened on summer nights. Both satellites were aloft there. Raksh was nearly at maximum distance, a tiny copper sickle, while Sohrab never showed much more than a spark. The light thus came chiefly from natural sky-glow and stars. Those last were more sharp and multitudinous than was usual when you looked up through the thick lowland air. Dan could even pick out Sol among them. Two sister planets glowed bright enough to cast glades on the lake, and Sohrab’s image skipped upon it as swiftly as the moonlet flew.
It’s almost like a night on High America
, Dan thought. The memory of walking beneath upland skies, Mary Lochaber at his side, stabbed him. He hurried toward the radio shack.
No one ordinarily stood watch there, but whoever was on patrol—against catlings, genghis ants, or less foreseeable emergency makers —checked it from time to time to see if any messages had come in. Dan stared at the register dial. Yes! Half an hour ago! His finger stabbed the playback button. “Weather Center calling/’ said a voice from Anchor. “Hello, Moondance. Look, we’ve got indications of a storm front building off the Uranian coast, but we need to check a wider area. Can you take some local readings for us?” He didn’t hear the rest. Sickness rose in his throat.
A footfall pulled him back to here and now. He whirled rather than turned. Startled, Eva Spain stepped from the threshold. For a moment, in the dim illumination of its interior, they confronted each other.
“Oh!” She tried to laugh. “I’m not an urso hunting his dinner, Dan. Honest, I’m not.”
“What are you after, then?” he snapped.
If that were Mary, tall and slim, hair like sunlight, standing against the darkness in the door
—It was only Eva. In the same coarse coveralls as him, with the same knife and pistol—tools—at her belt, she likewise needed no reduction helmet on her red-tressed, snub-nosed, freckle-faced head. Also like him, she was of stocky build, though she lacked the share of Oriental genes that made his locks dark, cheekbones high, skin tawny. And she had a few years less than he did, whereas Mary was of his age. That didn’t matter; they were all young. What mattered was that this was not Mary.
Now don’t blame Eva for that
, Dan told himself.
She’s good people
. He recalled that for a long while, practically since they met, everybody seemed to take for granted that in due course they would marry. He couldn’t ask for a better wife, from a practical viewpoint.
Practicality be damned.
Her eyes, large and green, blinked; he saw light reflected off tears. Yet she answered him stiffly: “I could inquire the same of you. Except I’d be more polite about it.”
Dan swallowed. “I’m sorry. Didn’t mean to be rude.”
She eased a little, stepped close and patted his hand. Her palm was not as hard as his; she was a biologist, not an explorer who had lately begun farming on the side. Nevertheless he felt callouses left by the gear and animal harness that every low-lander must use.
(Mary’s touch was soft. Not that she was an idler. Even on High America, survival required that every healthy adult work, and she did a competent job of keeping the hospital records. But she never had to cut brush, midwife a cow, cook on a wood fire for a campful of loggers, dress an animal she herself had shot and cure its hide. Such was lowlander labor, and it would be death for Highland Mary to try, even as it was death for her to be long marooned in the wilderness around Lake Moondance.)
“Sure,” Eva said gently, “I understand. You’ve fretted your nerves raw.”
“What does bring you here at this hour?”
“The same as you.” She frowned. “Do you think I’m not concerned? Bill Svoboda and the Loch-abers, they’re my friends as well as yours.”
Dan struck fist in palm, again and again. “What can we
do?”
“Start a search.”
“Yes. One wretched little aircar available, to scout over how many thousands of square kilometers? It’d take days to assemble a fleet of vehicles. They haven’t got days. Bill does, maybe, but Mary and Ralph … very possibly don’t.”
“Why not? If their helmets are intact——”
“You haven’t seen as many cases as I have. It takes a pretty strong man, with considerable training, to wear one of those rigs almost constantly. When your own chest expansion has to power the reduction pump—the ordinary person can’t sleep in one of them. That, and sheer muscular exhaustion, make the body extra vulnerable to pressure intoxication, when the victim takes the helmet off so he can rest.”
Dan had spoken in a quick, harsh monotone. Eva replied less grimly: “They can’t be any old where. They were homebound, after all.”
“But you know they, the Lochabers, they wanted to see more of the countryside, and Bill promised he’d cruise them around. They’d’ve been zigzagging the whole way. They could have landed at random, as far as we’re concerned, for a closer look at something, and come to grief. Even if we pass near, treetops or crags or mists can hide their vehicle from us.”
“I’m aware that this is a rather large and not especially mapped country.” Eva’s response was dry. It broke into anger. She stamped her foot. “Why are you moping around like this? Dan Coffin, the great discoverer! Won’t you
try?”
He hit back indignation of his own. “I intend to start at dawn. I assure you it’s no use flying at night, it’s a waste of fuel. Light-amplifier systems lose too much detail, in that complicated viewfield where the smallest trace may the one that counts. The odds are astronomical against chancing in sight of a beacon fire or in metal-detector range or——” He slumped. “Oh, God, Eva, why am I being sarcastic? You’ve flown more than I have. It’s so huge a territory, that’s all. If I had the slightest clue——”
Once more her manner mildened. “Of course.” Slowly: “Could we maybe have such a lead? Some faint indication that they might have headed one way rather than another? Did Mary—did Mary tell you she was especially interested in seeing some particular sight?”
“Well, the geysers at Ahriman,” he said in his wretchedness. “But the last call-in we got from them was that they’d visited this and were about to proceed elsewhere.”
“True. I’ve played back that tape a few times myself.”
“Maybe you put an idea into their heads. Eva? You saw considerable of them, too, while they were here.”
“So I did. I chatted about a lot of our natural wonders. Ralph’s fascinated by the giant species.” She sighed. “I offered to find him a herd of tera-saur. We flew to Ironwood where one had been reported, but it had moved on northward, the trail was clear but there was a thunderstorm ahead. I had ;rouble convincing Ralph how foolish we’d be to fly near that weather. Just because lowland air currents are slow, those High Americans always seem to think they lack force… . No, Ralph’s bright, he knows better; but he does have a reckless streak. Why am I rambling? We——”