Star Light

This left Barle

It was hard to see just what they could expect to accomplish by such a fiction, of course. It could hardly be a trap of any sort; there could be no wrong reaction to the story. Complete mystification was the only possible response. If there were something deeper and more subtle involved, Barle

And he didn’t like guessing anyway. It was so much easier to be able to take reports at face value, allowing only for the capabilities of the speaker and not worrying about his possible motives. A time the commander reflected, the a

Really, all one could do was assume that the report was a truthful one; that should, at least, cause anything underhanded on the human side to backfire on its pla

Come to think of it, this was another potential check on the accuracy of the human reports. Certainly this one, whatever else could be said for or against it, showed signs of having come through quickly. Of course, Mrs. Hoffman was involved this time.

The thought that Easy’s involvement had the situation a special one was probably the only idea Barle

“Easy!” Boyd turned from his microphone and called across to her new station. “We seem to have convinced Don. He’s sending a vision set with his six-man search party. He wants to check his own estimate of the distance to where Reffel vanished, and assumes that we can pinpoint where his transmitter was. I know we could have at the time, but I’m not sure that would have been recorded. Do you want to take over here while I check up with the mappers, or would you rather go yourself?”

“I want to watch here a little longer. Benj can go up, if he can stand leaving the screens for a minute.” She looked only half-questioningly at the boy, and he nodded and disappeared at once. He was gone rather longer than expected, and returned with a somewhat crestfallen appearance.

“They said they’d gladly give me the map made from the first part of Reffel’s flight, before I had told him to go on out to where he could barely see the Kwembly. All they could say about where he disappeared was that it must be off that map, which covers the width of the valley for about a mile westward of the cruiser.”

Mersereau grunted in a

The captain was neither particularly surprised nor greatly disturbed. He had already discussed his own estimate of the distance and direction involved with Stakendee, who was leading the search party.

“I suppose the human beings were right about having you take the set along,” the captain had remarked. “It will be a nuisance to carry and I don’t much like risking its loss, but having it will cut down the risk of losing you. I’m still concerned about a repetition of the flood that brought us here, and the people up above can’t give us any definite prediction — though they seem to agree that there should indeed be a flood season coming. With the set, they’ll be able to warn you if they get any definite information, and you’ll be able to tell me, through them, if you do find anything.”

“I’m not sure in my own mind what’s best to do if a flood does come,” said Stakendee. ” Of course if we’re close to the Kwembly we’ll do our best to get back aboard, and I suppose if we’re really distant we’d make for the north side of the valley, which seems to be nearer. In a borderline case, though, I’m not sure which would be best; surviving the flood would do us little good if the ship got washed a year’s walk farther downstream.”

“I’ve been thinking about that, too,” replied the captain, “and I still don’t have an answer. If we’re washed away again there’s the very large chance the ship will be ruined. I can’t decide whether we should take time to get life-support equipment out and set up on the valley side even before we go on with trying to melt her out. Your own point is a good one, and maybe I should have it there for your sake as well as ours. Well I’ll solve it. Get on your way. The sooner this is done, the less we’ll have to worry about floods.”

Stakendee gestured agreement, and five minutes later Dondragmer saw him and his group emerge from the main lock. The communicator gave the part a grotesque appearance; the black of plastic, four inches high and wide and twelve in length, was being carried littler fashion by two of the searchers. The three-foot poles were only two inches apart, supported on yokes at the mid-point of the eighteen-inch-long bodies of the bearers. The poles and yokes had been fashioned from ship’s stores; the Mesklinite equivalent of lumber, of which literally tons filled some of the store compartments, formed another of the incongruities which the nuclear-powered cruiser offered in such profusion.

The search party rounded the boy of the Kwembly, which was facing northwest, and proceeded straight west. Dondragmer watch its lights for a few minutes as they wound around and over the boulders, but had to turn to other matters long before they were out of sight.

Elongated figures were swarming over the hull working the radiator bar loose. Dondragmer had not like to give the order for such destructive activity; but he had weighed as best he could the relative risks of doing it or of leaving it undone, and after reaching a decision he was not sufficiently human to keep on worrying whether or not it had been a good one. Just as most human beings thought of Drommians as typically paranoid, most Mesklinites who knew them at all thought of human beings as typically vacillating. Dondragmer, the decision made and the order given, simple watched to make sure that a minimum of damage was done to the hull. From the bridge he was unable to see over its curve to the point, far astern, where the conductors came through; he would have to go outside a little later to oversee that part of the work. Maybe it would be even better to take a vision set outside and let the human engineers supervise it. Of course, with the communication delay it would be difficult for them to stop a serious error in time.

For the moment, though, the job could be left in Praffen’s nippers. The problem the captain had mentioned to Stakendee needed more thought. The life-support equipment was easy to dismount, and he could spare the men to transport it without cutting into the ice-removal project too badly; but it a flood came while it was ashore and carried the Kwembly a long distance, things might become awkward. The system was a closed-cycle one using Mesklinite plants, depending on the fusion converters for its prime energy. By its nature, it had just about the right of vegetation to take care of the crew — had there been much more there would not have been enough Mesklinites to take care of the plants. It might be possible to carry part of it away and leave the rest, and expand each half to take care of the whole crew whenever circumstances forced the decision between ship and shore; it would be easy enough to make more tanks, but growing either culture up to a population sufficient to supply hydrogen for the whole crew might be a little tense on time.