Noise

IV Crescendo

The following weeks ought to have been boring for a person who had never needed much more than an hour to get from one place to another on the same planet, but they weren’t.

Hoani was a perfectly capable sailor as long as he could see the sails. Wanaka had checked that very early, though she had never left him alone on watch while all the rest were sleeping. The sails, however, were now under water and quite out of sight. Their orientation with the currents they were supposed to be using could be told only from the length of cordage paid out to the various corners, and their depths from the angle at which these lines entered the water. This last was very hard indeed to observe, since they passed through rings on the sides and corners of the deck, which was now floating level with the surface except as waves lifted one corner or another. Two lines, on the nearest deck angles, led to the deepest sail corners, which were held apart by a length of the former mast; not all of this had been used to improvise “outrigger” booms. The peak of the larger sail itself was attached to the center of a shorter such length, whose ends were controlled by lines through rings on the farther corners of the deck. These ends kept separated the longer side of the small sail, while a fifth ring on the deck, midway between the last two, guided the line attached to its apex.

Had anyone described the job earlier to Mike he would have called it impossible. The small sail was maneuvered mainly to raise or lower very slightly the peak of the larger one; all three of its control lines needed very practiced handling. The other two were used to manipulate the slant of the larger triangle, so as to control its depth more coarsely.

Since even the child was able to do all this fairly well, Mike had no excuse to use the i-word; and to forestall any possible other risk of his suffering boredom, Wanaka had decided that ’Ao’s physical strength was not up to handling all five lines. The passenger was therefore gradually earning crew status as well as learning Finger.

He made frequent errors. The child was more than ready to provide advice, but occasionally this was wrong and even more often the man failed to get her message promptly and correctly. The other two adults, when available, often had to do incomprehensible and complex things to correct the errors. The captain was quite tolerant about all this, the child considerably less so. She was young enough still to be more conscious of what she already knew than of what she didn’t.

There was no such thing as really heaving to, though that was the theoretical aim. Malolo was either being borne more or less poleward by surface current—not precisely south; Coriolis force is ordinary inertia, and not confined to Earth—or dragged the other way by the submerged sail. The idea was to match the two effects as closely as possible to maintain latitude. Wind neither helped nor hindered significantly; it had only a little grip even on the cabin.

Besides latitude maintenance some actual maneuvering was necessary. Chance could be counted on to lead them into storms and hail, which were necessary for water, but manipulation was needed to keep them out of waterspouts that could be and had been both chemically and mechanically troublesome even when the ship was whole.

Continuous duty for everyone was not, of course, possible, and at times they had to accept inadequate control of the sea anchor while people slept, or merely rested, or attended to other necessary jobs. These times would obviously be fewer when Mike could handle an unsupervised watch, and he felt guilty at how long it was taking him to interpret reflexively the almost imperceptible shifts of the control lines.

The general asymmetry of the present craft didn’t help, either; one hull paralleling a floating cabin was not the same thing as two essentially identical hulls. Hoani had almost, at one point, asked why the cabin wasn’t set to lead, or trail behind, the remaining hull, or even to balance on top of it, but hesitated long enough to be saved from looking ignorant by another of Kainui’s phenomena.

Early on the second day after the hull-seed had been fertilized and set afloat on its tow line, everyone’s attention had been caught by an explosive sound abeam. Mike had watched with a crawling sensation along his spine as a jet of water far more massive and coherent than the usual waterspouts had climbed skyward a few hundred meters away. A wave spread outward from its base as it rose and another as it slowly collapsed. These did not travel rapidly in Kainui’s gravity but were quite high enough when they reached the “ship” to lift first one side and then the other well over a meter. If the phenomenon had occurred much closer, or if the system had lacked catamaran stability, even Mike could see that the rest of their trip would have been performed swimming. He suddenly realized that a waterspout would have had the same effect and was thankful for his earlier silence.

This was unfortunate in a way; anything that discourages a student from asking questions can interfere with education.

He rather suspected that if Malolo were more completely wrecked the natives would, after appropriate preparation, start to swim, doubtless towing what they needed; but he decided not to ask. Aside from the possibility that the question would be deemed silly, he was a little afraid of the answer.

He did raise his eyebrows at Keo, who was closest. The man had no trouble understanding the implied question.

“Very rare,” he remarked. “Only the second one I’ve ever seen. Strictly a matter of chance. A really broad sound front somewhere below gets focused just right by salinity or temperature lensing, and puts maybe a hundred atmospheres of pressure on one or two square meters just under the surface. That’s one reason we make the cities in separate, flexibly linked units, and why some of us feel safer out on sorties. Actually I’ve never heard of anything as small as a ship’s being hit directly by one.”

“Who’d have heard?” Wanaka, ’Ao, and ’Oloa spoke together. Keo simply shrugged. He might, of course, have been merely trying to keep Hoani from panicking; if so, he didn’t bother to justify himself, but simply went on. “Cities get hit every now and then, of course. That’s why we keep kinai aki on duty.”

Mike was a little startled at the use to which the term “fireman” had been adapted, but reflected that after all Kainui’s atmosphere didn’t support combustion even if the air in the floating cities did.

“Do cities get really damaged by these things?” he asked.

“Bad air leaks usually, float damage fairly often. I’ve never heard of a city’s actually sinking—or being missed,” he added hastily. “People have died from suffocation or poisoning, of course, when too much air got in.”

“I guess I’m glad I didn’t know about them before. At least we don’t have to watch out for such things.”

“Why not?” snapped ’Ao. “Just because one happened here doesn’t mean another won’t. The laws of chance don’t have any memory!”

It was Mike’s first chance to correct a native. He wished, though, that ’Ao had been an adult. “I know they don’t, tama-iti,” he answered. He regretted the word the instant he uttered it, but felt more need to justify himself than to apologize. “But we haven’t been watching for them so far, and I don’t see how we’d spot them coming anyway. Is there something you know about that that I don’t?”

“No. You’re right. I’m sorry. I thought—” ’Ao’s voice trailed off.

“You thought you’d caught a grown-up making a mistake, didn’t you? I don’t blame you for speaking without thinking.”

“I do,” Wanaka cut in, “but as long as it was just words, complete with apology, we’ll write it off as a lesson.”

The child’s relief showed around her mask, but she said no more just then. Instead, she flipped on her helmet and went to examine the seedling towing aft—southward, away from the sea-anchor system—of the cabin. She checked her safety line very pointedly first; the surface current being opposed by the sails was fairly strong. Mike wasn’t sure whether she was more concerned with being swept away—after all, rescue would have been fairly easy—or losing more points.

The growing ship looked like a small but oddly shaped torpedo, and was already over half a meter long. The oddness sprang from what looked like a pair of short wings sprouting from each side. These, even the visitor could see, were actually keels; there were two hulls growing, deck to deck, just barely afloat. He had not yet asked why this was, or what would be done with the spare one; he was hoping to figure at least the first question out for himself as a matter of self-respect. Like ’Ao, he was feeling a need to be right.

He could not, of course, keep his eyes on the child; control lines were his business of the moment. He had never in any language heard the phrase “The buck stops here,” but was very familiar with its underlying concept.

As it happened, although he was in charge of the sea anchor when things did go wrong some days later, it was not Mike’s fault. At least, no one blamed him aloud, and he could see plenty of excuse for himself. It happened during one of the most violent storms of the journey so far, and his eyes simply couldn’t follow the lines he was holding all the way to the deck. He didn’t know that anything had gone wrong until the foggily visible deck itself suddenly went out of sight under water.

Everyone was helmeted at the moment. Mike flipped his own back when he did realize what had occurred, but no one could hear him—they might not have in the storm even if their own helmets had been off—and it was a minute or more before Keo saw him bareheaded and realized something must be wrong. By that time the cords were dipping deeply even at the cabin and hull ends, and the wake had vanished. Malolo had clearly ceased to buck the surface current.

Keo was at Mike’s side, helmet also flipped back, in a few seconds, and seemed to understand the situation. He selected the line connected to the upper corner of the smaller sail, removed it from Hoani’s grasp, and pulled on it hard. There was no obvious result; certainly the slope of the remaining lines did not improve. After perhaps half a minute Keo relinquished his hold on the cord and casually dropped it into the sea. Then he took one of the lower-spar ones and, yelling that Mike should follow his example with the one left to him, began hauling it in. By then it was fairly evident even to the passenger that the whole system had dipped too low, bitten too much into the deep current, and would have to be pulled up and realigned. He wondered whether anything had actually torn loose, but saw no sign of cordage, booms, or sails on the surface.

Meter after meter of tow line came in. Mike’s stronger arms brought his side along more rapidly, and his corner of the big sail brought up against the deck and was stopped by its guide ring before Keo had finished with his. The native didn’t seem bothered by this. When his own line was in he handed it also to Mike, and bellowed as loudly as he could over the thunder and hail, “Hold ’em both. When I wave hard, up and down, start letting them out together. And I mean together.” Without waiting for an answer, he flipped on his helmet and dived toward the deck half a dozen meters away.

The captain and the child had by this time realized what was happening, but continued with their own duties. Mike realized that there was now no relative current to sweep a swimmer away, and wondered whether Keo had thought about that problem when the sea anchor would be back in place. He would probably not have dared say anything even had it been possible, but couldn’t keep the thought entirely out of his mind, since even the most professional of professionals sometimes slips up. There seemed nothing to do, however, but keep tight hold of both lines as he had been ordered, and a close eye on the swimmer.

The latter soon ceased to be possible; Keo dived before he reached the deck, and was gone for several minutes. Mike could feel occasional tugs, first on one of his lines and then on the other, so he didn’t worry as badly as he might have; but when the mate appeared well over a hundred meters beyond the deck—the blinding hail had almost ceased for the moment—the relief at seeing him at all greatly outweighed any anxiety over his distance. The latter feeling disappeared completely when it became obvious that the swimmer was still in contact. At least, he was clearly holding on to a cord, and gradually a sail itself became visible between him and the deck. It must be the small one; its backup float line could just be seen at its far corner, and Mike now realized that the two sinkers at the ends of the larger sail’s boom were also against the edge of the deck where the control lines he was still holding entered the sea.

Keo now began pulling himself closer hand over hand. He reached the appropriate sail corner quickly enough and seemed to be examining something for a moment; then he let go of everything and began to swim toward where Mike crouched at the rear of the cabin. The two lines Hoani was holding were too far apart at the deck to be reached by one person at the same time, and he appreciated Keokolo’s thoughtfulness. His climbing along one of them would have made it very hard to keep the pair paid out equally as his order had implied.

Of course, Keo might merely have distrusted Mike’s ability to manage both. The latter decided, of course, not to ask about this when the swimmer clambered up beside him.

“A float got popped by something,” Keo reported as his helmet flipped back. He added a short phrase composed entirely of words unfamiliar to the other. “Nothing we can blame on you, Mike. We’ll have to make another as soon as possible. Belay your lines where they are. You might as well go inside and charge up your breather while I get something from the cargo line. I wonder if Wanaka will be able to bring herself to dump a unit of iron.”

The implication here was obvious enough; the float from one of the cargo units would have to be put to a new use. Mike said nothing as Keo reentered the sea.

Neither did Wanaka, now close enough to have heard the mate and with her helmet off. Her attenion was otherwise occupied. She gestured ’Ao to approach, and issued some instructions in Finger. She pointed first, which helped the man tell that the orders concerned the floating seedling, but his increasing grasp of the gesture language was not yet up to getting all the details. Apparently she was supposed to take care of it somehow, but Mike had no idea of what danger it might be in.

The child entered the water and flippered toward the little torpedo shape while pulling the now slack line that had been towing it. Reaching her goal, she submerged with it, and Hoani lost track of both in the once more rising storm. He returned his attention to the mate while the latter freed an iron unit from the cargo line and brought it back to the cabin. He received, rather to his surprise, a nod of appreciation from the other; he had expected his watchfulness to be taken for granted. The nod was not accompanied by words as thunder still discouraged speech even out of water, but a few gestures got across; Mike obediently belayed both the cords he had been holding, appreciating Keo’s failure to check his knots, and accompanied the latter to the air lock.

Keo insisted by a few Finger symbols and some less formal gestures that Mike use it first, but they were both inside the cabin in moments. The captain stayed outside for obvious reasons. ’Ao had not yet reappeared. Keo kept silent, busy detaching the float from the unit he had brought in. This seemed not to be a very demanding task, and Mike ventured to ask what ’Ao had been told to do.

“She’s under the cabin, keeping the new ship from the hail and making certain nothing happens to its tow line. The danger isn’t really very great, but that’s the only ship seed we have. If we lose it, we have a long swim in a direction we’d have to guess.”

“I suppose the captain is watching the kid, then.”

“Probably not. ’Ao knows what’s going on. She’s no more immune to mistakes than either of us, but Wanaka has a lot of other things to do. So have we. Could you check our life support while I’m at this? I’ll have to go outside again to install this float as soon as it’s ready, because right now there’s no way to maneuver if a spout crowds us. I won’t be able to watch you, but I know the little one has shown you about some of it, at least.”

Hoani nodded and complied. The psuedoliving intake stage oxidized carbon monoxide with sodium peroxide from the “leaf,” getting enough energy from the process to feed its own intake pump. This kept the inside pressure slightly above Kainui normal even after the carbon dioxide had also been precipitated. There was no reliable way to keep even self-healing machinery completely leakproof, and it was much more than merely desirable that all leakage be outward. Given the length of a typical human generation, it would be a long, long time before the Kainuian human subspecies’ tolerance for CO increased usefully.

Keo had left long before Mike finished his assignment.

When he emerged from the cabin at last, the storm was still visible to the west, blocking any view of both Kaihapa and the suns, but was no longer dropping hail on the vessel. Background thunder was still louder than usual, but now caused Mike less trouble because of his improving skill with Finger. ’Ao had returned to the hull leaving the seedling in the water, but the latter’s tow line was still slack. Keo, out of sight and presumably under water, had evidently not yet reestablished the sea-anchor system. Wanaka had three control lines in her right hand and two in her left, and seemed to be giving them her full attention. Mike glanced around, noted the usual number of waterspouts within sight, but was pretty sure that none was a menace at the moment. Experience had taught him that Keo’s present job would probably take only a few minutes.

He was right. The mate suddenly appeared beside the deck and gestured rather casually, and the captain promptly signaled to Hoani to take over the lines. ’Ao started to take up her usual position beside him, but was gestured back to the hull and set to another task—Mike, his attention focused on the lines, couldn’t see just what. He wasn’t sure just how happy the sudden increase in trust made him feel. He had flown sailplanes on Earth, and would always vividly remember his first solo landing. However, the watch ended with no further troubles.

The seedling continued to grow, sometimes several centimeters in a single day, more often slowly enough to need careful measurement. The two little hulls were now separated slightly as a developing deck appeared between them and grew. After a few days, Mike risked a question.

“I don’t see any sign of a new cabin. We make do with this one, I take it?”

Wanaka nodded. “That would be a whole set of separate seeds. Cabin and air lock unit, air equipment, sails, furnishings. Much more expensive ones, too. And much more trouble getting them to stop growth just at the right stage in each case to let them fit together properly.”

“We have them, I suppose.”

“Many of them. The most important. The first three I mentioned, plus the kumu’rau. We’ll have to deploy that pretty soon, by the way, at the rate we’ve been using oxygen. It’ll complicate handling the sea anchor, and probably cost us some latitude one way or the other, and we’ll be really vulnerable to waterspouts while it’s out, but that’s not a choice.”

Hoani nodded. He had seen many times, before the journey had become so exciting, the strip of pseudolife that didn’t look particularly like either a tree or a leaf but would at least have been green with chlorophyll if either of the suns had produced much green light. It was nearly ten meters wide and more than a hundred and fifty long, and trailed behind Malolo during times when the suns were highest and Wanaka had forced herself to admit that oxygen was as important as new cargo and hence to accept the very low sailing speed demanded by its production. Just now it was reeled up out of the sea at the aft end of the cabin. Mike had been wondering how long they could do without it, but had been reluctant to ask. He knew they had left Muamoku with a very large supply of oxygen cartridges, presumably fully charged, but didn’t know what “very large” meant in terms of person-hours of breathing.

Except, of course, that there was no way for it to be a definite number. He himself would have been tempted to top the oxygen supply off every day, but now realized that with the “tree-leaf” deployed they were much more vulnerable to waterspouts. The captain had now decided that the risk had to be taken.

Each of the next ten days, for the four hours when the suns were at their highest, the tree-leaf—Mike had decided that kumu’rau was probably an evolved blend of Hawaiian and Maori—was paid out. Fortunately it trailed in the opposite direction from the sea-anchor system, and didn’t directly interfere with the control lines; but since it was affected by the surface current, its deployment did add problems to handling these.

Mike was not excused from this complication of control duty after the first day, which he spent watching Wanaka and Keo very closely indeed. Thereafter he was on his own, and to his own slowly decreasing surprise made no serious mistakes. His self-confidence, along with his fluency in Finger, was growing, though there was still very little risk of his reaching the dangerous overconfidence level.

It was ’Ao who was now totally relieved from the sea-anchor duty. Her muscular strength was not really up to it, and there was much else to keep her busy now that Mike needed practically no advice. Actually, everyone except Mike was mostly keeping alert for waterspouts while the oxygen-maker was deployed. Malolo was little more maneuverable at such times than when the sea-anchor system was out of action. Whenever one of these whirling towers of spray drew close enough to worry Wanaka or Keo when Mike was on the lines, one of them would take over without comment and ’Ao, without orders, would take the growing shiplet out of the sea and lash it quickly but securely onto the remaining hull. Mike wondered what would be done when it grew too big for this procedure.

He trusted the professional skill of his hosts, but knew there were conditions that even the most competent of seamen couldn’t handle; and he was pretty sure that the captain, good as she was at keeping her feelings to herself, was becoming more and more worried about something.

It was not the oxygen. After ten days of using the kumu’rau the cartridges were as full as when the sortie had started, and she made no attempt to hide her relief the last time it was reeled in.

Also, the problem was probably not their location. While it was not really practical to take a noon sight by instrument on the twin suns, it was evident that the ship’s latitude had changed. They were too far south. While even Hoani could see that Malolo had drifted some distance eastward, since the sister planet Kaihapa was clearly nearer the western horizon, longitude mattered very little. The likelihood of having to circumnavigate a parallel of latitude in order to find a given city went without saying in Kainui seamanship. It was not a difficulty of knowing the ship’s longitude, which could be worked out celestially with enough effort; the eclipses of the two suns provided time information. However, knowing that of the ship’s intended port with no effective long-range communication was entirely another matter. A marine chronometer is useful only if there is a Greenwich, and it stays put.

Trouble did eventually come, of course, but Mike never found out whether it was the one worrying the captain.

Even the procedure difficulties threatened by the growing replacement ship failed to become serious. Well before the seedling was too heavy to ride the remaining hull without sinking it gunwale down, it had become far too bulky for even Keo and the captain together to hoist, regardless of ingenious improvisations of cordage. This seemed to bother no one. When a waterspout threatened, the growing craft was now simply moored as securely as the supply of rope would permit and allowed to float by itself. This, of course, made the duty on the sea-anchor lines too complicated for a beginner, and Mike was sometimes rather glad to see a spout developing nearby. It saved him labor, and he had certainly not yet become overconfident.

On the second of these occasions, however, one of the mooring lines became slack—no one ever found who was to blame, but ’Ao and Mike could share the happy confidence that it wasn’t their fault. This allowed a minor collision, and one of the growing keels was badly cracked, while a scratch penetrated all four protective coats of the older hull. Now even Mike was informed enough to worry, though the scratched area was repainted using appropriate seeds as soon as the waves permitted.

Wanaka then changed procedure. Fewer but longer tow lines were used, and the embryonic vessel was kept farther from the rest of the system. This was not too difficult when the wind more or less directly opposed the surface current, which it usually did. Otherwise, while the little craft still floated with keels horizontal, the high side of the developing deck sandwiched between them now caught a good deal of air. And made maneuvering very complex indeed.

This Mike could understand. What bewildered him was that at the next approach of a waterspout, ’Ao was ordered to swim to the tow and lash herself to it as solidly as she could—in fact, the captain went with her and supervised the process before rejoining Keo at the lines.

She gestured to Mike, who for the moment was free of duty, and ordered him in the hand language he now understood quite well: “Keep your eyes on her. If she’s swept away, tell Keo. Don’t waste time reporting to me.”

He nodded understanding and returned to the other hull, which offered both a higher viewpoint, since the cabin roof was no place to ride out a waterspout, and was also closer to the object of his attention.

He was just a little undecided. He would have conceded to anyone the importance of discipline in any sort of crew, but couldn’t help feeling that he himself should be more able physically to perform a rescue; the captain might technically be a better swimmer, but in the storm-lashed sea it looked as though muscle might be a greater need.

Demand for strength might explain why she should have ordered him to tell Keo first, rather than attempting rescue himself; no doubt there were routine procedures familiar to the sailors that Mike knew nothing about. His intentions wavered while Malolo and her attachments rocked and shivered in the turbulence around the spout.

It was quickly over, waterspouts traveling as they do, and no decision had to be made; ’Ao was still in sight and lashed in place when things quieted down. Wanaka immediately swam to the child and helped free her from the lashings, and they returned to the cabin together.

In another two or three minutes it was safe to doff helmets, and Mike looked for signs of her ordeal on the child’s face. He was astonished to find none visible around her mask; she seemed as perky as though she had enjoyed the ride.

It seemed very likely indeed that there was something else Mike didn’t know. He decided not to inquire what it might be; he was not yet emotionally convinced that almost the only silly questions are the ones not asked.

There was now a good deal of work for all; the spinning of everything in the waterspout had upset the sea-anchor control system—it was lucky that the oxygen leaf had not been deployed—and badly tangled the set of tow lines that had kept the child and her charge part of the system. The seedling, now more of a sapling, had indeed come much closer to the main hull than anyone had wanted; Mike actually remarked aloud to Keo how much better it would have been if they had managed to salvage more cordage from the diseased hull, and the other had merely nodded. This left Hoani wondering whether he had overshot being merely right and become blatantly obvious.

With the sea-anchor controls reestablished and Mike once more handling them, the other two adults—’Ao was in the cabin, to eat and sleep—left Hoani’s range of vision and attention, saying something about rearranging the tow system. When they came back more than an hour later, they were still talking but seemed dissatisfied.

In spite of this, the same general procedure was followed with the next unavoidable spout, and the next. There were no collisions on either occasion, but each time the captain and mate spent a while afterward trying to improve arrangements. Even Mike could see that they were getting even farther south. There was simply no quick way of judging the changing speed of the deep current.

Then several days passed with no real incidents. Spouts were seen, of course; a total lack of them in Kainui’s grossly unstable atmosphere would have been really noteworthy, but none came near enough to require action. Just possibly the adults became too relaxed; it was ’Ao who shouted the warning about another approaching menace and dived for her hull station without waiting for orders.

Wanaka followed as usual to make sure of child’s and doll’s lashings, and by the time she got back to Keo and the lines the Malolo-sea-anchor system was again out of control. Mike did not actually see the separation of their tow; he was almost pulled from station and lifelines by an especially violent jerk, had to glance momentarily around to find another grip, and when he looked up again could see nothing but seething water where seedling and child had been.

It took several seconds to convince himself that tow and rider had really disappeared, and more than a minute to make his way across to the cabin where captain and mate had just stopped working because the sea anchor had been disarranged again.

By this time Mike had no trouble getting his message across in Finger, which was fortunate because all helmets had to stay tight. The captain asked only three questions, and of course her facial expression could not be seen as she gestured.

“’Ao was still lashed to the ship when they disappeared?”

“As far as I know. I didn’t see the actual separation. I told you why. She was there only seconds before.”

But Wanaka didn’t seem to be thinking along whose-fault-was-it lines. She could not, Mike thought, possibly have blamed him for the loss of the tow, but his failure actually to see it go might be another matter.

“And her lashings seemed secure when you last did see?”

“Yes, Captain.”

“’Oloa, too?”

“Yes.”

The captain’s tension disappeared, as far as could be told with her helmet on.

“Perfect,” she gestured.