The Smoke Ring

Her father smiled, nodding approval. He’d taught her well.

“Now, how do I move the water into the pipe?”

Debby mulled it. “No tide—”

“How do I keep outsiders from watching me do it?”

Debby brightened. She kicked herself to the fore end of the water tank. “I’m here, right? There’s a cabin, and I’m in it. And here’s the plug…”

“Just so!” Carlot joined her. “You pull the plug. You blow in it. When the water spurts back at you, you slam the plug in quick.”

“I could get a lungful of water that way.”

“Sure you could. We’ve all done our share of choking. Father taught us this so he wouldn’t have to do it himself.”

“Why does it blow back?”

“I…Dad?”

Booce said, “The steam pushes both ways. Out the nozzle, and backward too. That churns the water so more water comes down the pipe. After the rocket settles down, it’s thrust that pulls the water through. The back-pressure holds it from going in too fast. You can let the rocket run till the water’s almost gone.”

Carlot said, “You’ve got to let the pipefire die before the tank’s empty. Otherwise you’ll char the nozzle and the tank both. It’s a mess if you have to throw water on a pipefire.”

The storm was definitely reaching out to enfold the tree …and the jungle was closer too. Booce pointed. “Carlot—”

Carlot looked. “Happyfeet?”

“Maybe. Debby, what have we got for weapons?”

“Harpoons. The rocket, I guess.”

“Not enough. All right, ladies. Maybe it’s just a loose jungle, and even if it’s happyfeet they may not have noticed anything, but I think we should hide.”

“Hide?” Debby was outraged. “Booce, that’s not much of a jungle. Carther States was twenty times that size.”

The jungle was closer now, a fuzzy green ellipsoid with a shadowy slit in it, as if foliage had been shorn away to form a window into the interior. Booce said, “A jungle that size can hold a family of twenty or thirty. Debby, a tree is big. We can vanish into cracks in the bark and never be seen. I…think we’ve got time. Help me take the rocket apart.”

“Booce, it was tough enough putting it together!”

“You think I like this?” But Booce and Carlot were already tugging at pipe and nozzle, and Debby perforce joined them.

“The pipe is…priceless. We…can’t let happyfeet…get it.” Booce gasped in the thin air. The nozzle jerked loose and tumbled along the bark with Booce wrapped around it. His voice drifted back. “The rest they can have. We’ll hide the pipe in some crack and guard it. Now we really won’t have time to make cabins.”

They pulled loose the pipe and water tank. The green puffball was closer yet, and a line of vapor trailed behind it. The vapor trail became a curve…

Debby said, “It’s dropped five men. Winged. Now it’s going away.”

Nozzle and tank floated, slowly rotating. Now Booce was free to look. “They’re making for the Wart.”

“We can’t let them have it!” Debby cried.

“Well, the truth is, we can,” Booce said. He was pushing the pipe ahead of him, kicking hard. Carlot and Debby flew to help. “Maybe the CARM can take it back for us. If not…we don’t need the Wart to reach the Clump. Those five that were dropped are after us.”

The log was far east, drifting in the fringe of a storm complex. Rather found it before Jeffer did: shadow backlit by the sun.

Jeffer chased it down. The CARM arced over the top of the out tuft, moved in along the east side of the trunk. The dock came into view: a rectangle of bare wood, ragged around the edges. Rather felt the pull of the forward jets and heard pondwater slosh toward him. Water had spread along the CARM’s walls and was creeping forward.

He wasn’t actually getting used to this, was he?

“Where’s the rocket?” Clave sounded merely puzzled.

Where they had built the rocket, there was nothing. Wait…there, drifting loose, a pale-brown bell shape: the nozzle. There, some distance away, a brown ellipsoid trailing lines. Where was Carlot? Where was anyone?

“What happened here?” Clave demanded. “An explosion?”

Had there been a fire? Rather found only the small black scar of the cookfire. The arrangements around it were undisturbed.

Jeffer said, “We can’t search the whole tree. Where’s the sun?’’ Straight east. “We won’t get Kendy for another day.”

“Take us in,” Rather said.

Jeffer looked at him. “Why?”

“Just a guess.” Carlot had gone in, last sleep.

Jeffer swung the CARM toward Voy and fired the jets.

They skimmed above the bark. The fog was around them now.

Jeffer played with the controls. “There,” he said suddenly. “Five men.” But what showed in the window was an abstraction, orange blobs on red-and-black.

“We’re seeing by heat,” Jeffer said. For an instant the normal view returned: fog sliding along black bark. Then the red-and-black was back. “Didn’t Booce say something about happyfeet?”

“Find our people,” said Clave.

“Mmm…there.” Three orange blobs in a line. By normal light they became three human shapes lined along a crack. “And the rocket pipe, I think. Rather?”

Rather quickly disengaged his seat belt and moved aft.

He pulled the silver suit out of the water and slid his legs inside. Clave said, “Good. Get the rest of it on and go join the others. Take some harpoons. They won’t have weapons. Jeffer, how did they get here?”

“Good question. I don’t see anything that could have brought them. Something could be around the other side of the bark.”

Rather waited while Clave bound six harpoons against the silver suit’s chest. Air on; voice on. “Can you hear me?”

His voice blurted from the control panel, and Jeffer jumped. “I hear you fine.”

“Let me out.”

The bark was half a klomter distant. Rather used his jets. He thrilled to the pull of thrust along his body: blood leaving his head, abdomen settling toward his feet. Not quite a comfortable sensation, but one few others could share.

Behind him, the CARM accelerated south around the curve of the trunk and was gone.

Carlot and the others had seen the CARM; they waved.

Two klomters toward the blue blur of Voy, a hundred meters out from the tree, green-clad men emerged from the fog. They flew along the bark, peering into cracks as they passed. At this distance Rather could see only that they were five jungle giants, and armed.

They saw him. Their legs stopped moving, though their motion continued. Closer now. One was a woman…

Then they were kicking again, turning back toward the storm that was reaching to engulf the tree.

He could catch them. They couldn’t know about the silver suit. His tanks were full. Rather fired his boot jets; his course became an arc.

He could catch them. Then what? Kill them? Rather’s parents had both killed. They didn’t like talking about it. When they did, old anger distorted their faces. Yet this was the Silver Man’s duty: from time to time, he killed.

One of the intruders looked back, and then all five were kicking madly, doubling their speed.

His arms were full of harpoons, hampered, while Debby and Carlot and Booce had no weapons at all. Rather swung back toward his crew.

He thumped into the bark not far from Booce. Carlot was looking at him oddly. He opened his helmet and said, “It’s me. Five of them almost found you. What happened?”

“Happyfeet,” Booce said. “A small jungle, steampowered. Lupoff family, from the look of them. They want the Wart.”

Rather thumbed his personal Voice on. “Silver Man calling the Scientist. Jeffer, they want the Wart. Go for that.”

Nothing.

“They can’t hear me. Booce, I’ll guard you on the surface, but I don’t think they’ll be back. They looked like they were ru

Booce gri

“What?”

“Skip it.”

Rather settled himself on the bark above their heads. Helmet closed. The invulnerable warrior (and Carlot had looked at him as at some alien bird). But the happyfeet warriors were gone from sight.