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Slim looked up in surprise and came to a halt. “I beg your pardon. I didn't know anyone was here. I am sorry to have interrupted.” His enunciation was almost painfully precise.
The Industrialist said, “It's all right, youngster.”
But the Astronomer said, “Even if you had been entering an empty room, son, there would be no cause for slamming a door.”
“Nonsense,” insisted the Industrialist. “The youngster has done no harm. You simply scold him for being young. You, with your views!”
He said to Slim, “Come here, lad.”
Slim advanced slowly.
“How do you like the country, eh?”
“Very much, sir, thank you.”
“My son has been showing you about the place, has he?”
“Yes, sir. Red-I mean-.”
“No, no. Call him Red. I call him that myself. Now tell me, What are you two up to, eh?”
Slim looked away. “Why-just exploring, sir.”
The Industrialist turned to the Astronomer. “There you are, youthful curiosity and adventure lust. The race has not yet lost it.”
Slim said, “Sir?”
“Yes, lad.”
The youngster took a long time in getting on with it. He said, “Red sent me in for something good to eat, but I don't exactly know what he meant. I didn't like to say so.”
“Why, just ask Cook. She'll have something good for young-'uns to eat.”
“Oh no, sir. I mean for animals.”
“For animals?”
“Yes, sir. What do animals eat?”
The Astronomer said, “I am afraid my son is city-bred.”
“Well,” said the Industrialist, “there's no harm in that. What kind of an animal, lad?”
“A small one, sir.”
“Then try grass or leaves, and if they don't want that, nuts or berries would probably do the trick.”
“Thank you, sir,” Slim ran out again, closing the door gently behind him.
The Astronomer said, “Do you suppose they've trapped an animal alive?” He was obviously perturbed.
“That's common enough. There's no shooting on my estate and it's tame country, full of rodents and small creatures. Red is always coming home with pets of one sort or another. They rarely maintain his interest for long.”
He looked at the wall clock. “Your friends should have been here by now, shouldn't they?”
Three
The swaying had come to a halt and it was dark. The Explorer was not comfortable in the alien air. It felt as thick as soup and he had to breath shallowly. Even so-
He reached out in a sudden need for company. The Merchant was warm to the touch. His breathing was rough, he moved in an occasional spasm, and was obviously asleep. The Explorer hesitated and decided not to wake him. It would serve no real purpose.
There would be no rescue, of course. That was the penalty paid for the high profits which unrestrained competition could lead to. The Merchant who opened a new planet could have a ten-year monopoly of its trade, which he might hug to himself or, more likely, rent out to all comers at a stiff price. It followed that planets were searched for in secrecy and preferably away from the usual trade routes. In a case such as theirs then, there was little or no chance that another ship would come within range of their subetherics except for the most improbable of coincidences. Even if they were in their ship, that is, rather than in this-this-cage.
The Explorer grasped the thick bars. Even if they blasted those away, as they could, they would be stuck too high in open air for leaping.
It was too bad. They had landed twice before in the scout ship. They had established contact with the natives, who were grotesquely huge, but mild and unaggressive. It was obvious that they had once owned a flourishing technology, but hadn't faced up to the consequences of such a technology. It would have been a wonderful market.
And it was a tremendous world. The Merchant, especially, had been taken aback. He had known the figures that expressed the planet's diameter, but from a distance of two light-seconds, he had stood at the visiplate and muttered, “Unbelievable!”
“Oh, there are larger worlds,” the Explorer said. It wouldn't do for an Explorer to be too easily impressed.
“Inhabited?”
“Well, no.”
“Why, you could drop your planet into that large ocean and drown it.”
The Explorer smiled. It was a gentle dig at his Arcturian homeland, which was smaller than most planets. He said, “Not quite.”
The Merchant followed along the line of his thoughts. “And the inhabitants are large in proportion to their world?” He sounded as though the news struck him less favorably now.
“Nearly ten times our height.”
“Are you sure they are friendly?”
“That is hard to say. Friendship between alien intelligences is an imponderable. They are not dangerous, I think. We've come across other groups that could not maintain equilibrium after the atomic war stage and you know the results. Introversion. Retreat. Gradual decadence and increasing gentleness.”
“Even if they are such monsters?”
“The principle remains.”
It was about then that the Explorer felt the heavy throbbing of the engines.
He frowned and said, “We are descending a bit too quickly.”
There had been some speculation of the dangers of landing several hours before. The planetary target was a huge one for an oxygen-water world. Though it lacked the size of the uninhabitable hydrogen-ammonia planets and its low density made its surface gravity fairly normal, it gravitational forces fell off, but slowly with distance. In short, its gravitational potential was high and the ship’s calculator was a run-of-the-mill model not designed to plot landing trajectories at that potential range. That meant the Pilot would have to use manual controls.
It would have been wiser to install a more high-powered model, but that would have meant a trip to some outpost of civilization; lost time; perhaps a lost secret. The Merchant demanded an immediate landing.
The Merchant felt it necessary to defend his position now. He said angrily to the Explorer, “Don't you think the Pilot knows his job? He landed you safely twice before.”
Yes, thought the Explorer, in a scout ship, not in this un-maneuverable freighter. Aloud, he said nothing.
He kept his eye on the visiplate. They were descending too quickly. There was no room for doubt. Much too quickly.
The Merchant said peevishly, “Why do you keep silence?”
“Well then, if you wish me to speak, I would suggest that you strap on your floater and help me prepare the ejector.”
The Pilot fought a noble fight. He was no begi
He even maintained course, following the extrapolated line to the point on the northern continent toward which they were headed. Under other circumstances, with a shade more, luck, the story eventually would have been told and retold as a heroic and masterly reversal of a lost situation. But within sight of victory, tired body and tired nerves damped a control bar with a shade too much pressure. The ship, which had almost leveled off, dipped down again.
There was no room to retrieve the final error. There was only a mile left to fall. The Pilot remained at his post to the actual landing, his only thought that of breaking the force of the crash, of maintaining the spaceworthiness of the vessel. He did not survive. With the ship buckling madly in a soupy atmosphere, few ejectors could be mobilized and only one of them in time.
When afterward the Explorer lifted out of unconsciousness and rose to his feet, he had the definite feeling that but for himself and the Merchant, there were no survivors. And perhaps that was an overcalculation. His floater had burned out while still sufficiently distant from surface to have the fall stun him. The Merchant might have had less luck, even, than that.