Star Light

12

Dondragmer was far from indifferent, but by his standards it was normal to focus attention on a new matter likely to require action rather than clear up an old one where action was unlikely to help. He had not dropped the fate of his men from mind, but when a distant hoot bore the words “Here’s the end of the stream” to him his [program changed abruptly and drastically.

He could not see where the voice was coming from, since he was two feet below the general surface, but Borndender reported glimpses of a light perhaps half a mile away. At the captain’s order, the scientists climbed the hull part way to get a better view, while his assistant went in search of a rope to get the captain out of the ice pit. This took time. The sailors had, with proper professional care, returned the lines used in lowering the radiator bar to their proper places inside the cruiser; and when Skendra, Borndender’s assistant, tried to get through the main lock he found it sealed by a layer of clear ice which had frozen a quarter of an inch thick on the starboard side of the hull, evidently from the vapor emitted by the hot pool. Fortunately most of the holdfasts were projecting far enough through this to be usable, so he was able to climb on up to the bridge lock.

Meanwhile, Borndender called down that there were two lights approaching across the riverbed. At the captain’s order, he howled questions across the thousand-yard gap, and the two listened carefully for answers — even Mesklinite voices had trouble carrying distinct words for such a distance and through two layer of airsuit fabric. By the time Dondragmer was out of the hole, they knew that the approaching men were part of Stakendee’s command which had been ordered to follow down the stream, and that they had reached its end less than a mile from the ship; but until the group actually reached them, no further details could be made out.

Even then, they could no entirely understand it; the description did not match anything familiar to them.

“The river stayed about the same size all the way down,” the sailors reported. “It wasn’t being fed from anywhere, And it didn’t seem to be evaporating. It wound among the stones a lot, when it got down to where they were. Then we began to run into the funniest obstructions. There would be a sort of dam of ice, with the stream running around one end or the other of it. Half as cable or so farther on there’ be another dam, with just the same thing happening. It was as though some of it froze when it met the ice among the stones, but only the beginning part. The water that followed stayed liquid and went on around the dam until it found some ice. The dams would build up to maybe half a body length high before the following water would find its way around. We reached the last one, where it was still happening, just a few minutes ago. We’d seen the bright cloud rising over the ship before that, and wondered whether we ought to come back in case something was wrong; but we decided to carry out orders at least until the river started l to lead us away from the Kwembly again.”

“Good,” said the captain. “You’re sure the stream wasn’t getting any bigger?”

“So far as we could judge, no.”

“All right. Maybe we have more time than I thought, and it isn’t a forerunner of the same thing that brought us here. I wish I understood why the liquid was freezing in that funny way, though.”

“We’d better check with the human beings,” suggested Borndender, who had no ideas on the matter either, but preferred not to put the fact too bluntly.

“Right. And they’ll want measurements and analyses. I suppose you didn’t bring a sample of that river,” he said, rather than asked, the newcomers.

“No, sire. We had nothing to carry it in.”

“All right. Born, get containers and bring some back; analyze it as well as quickly as you can. One of these men will guide you. I’ll go back to the bridge and bring the humans up to date. The rest of you get tools and start chipping ice so we can use the main lock.”

Dondragmer closed the conversation by starting to climb the ice crusted hull. He waved toward the bridge as he went, assuming that he was being watched and perhaps even recognized.

Benj and McDevitt had managed to keep track of him, though neither found it easy to tell Mesklinites apart, and were waiting eagerly when he reached the bridge to hear what he had to say. Benj in particular had grown even more tense since the search under the cruiser had been interrupted; perhaps the helmsmen had not been there after all — perhaps they had been among the newcomers who had arrived to interrupt the search — perhaps — perhaps…

McDevitt was a patient man by nature and liked the youngster, but even he was getting irritated by the time Dondragmer’s voice reached the station.

The report fascinated the meteorologist, though it was no consolation to his young companion. Benj wanted to interrupt with a question about Beetchermarlf, but knew it would be futile; and when the captain’s account ended, McDevitt immediately began to talk.

“This is not much more than a guess, Captain,” he began, “Though perhaps you scientists will be able to stiffen it when he analyzes those samples. It seems possible that the pool around would was originally an ammonia-water solution — we had evidence of that before — which froze, not because the temperature went down, but because it lost much of its ammonia and its freezing point went up. The fog around you just before the whole trouble started, back on the snowfield, was ammonia, your scientists reported; I’m guessing that it came form the colder areas far to the west. Its droplets began to react with the water ice, and melted it partly by forming an eutectic and partly by releasing heat — you were afraid of something of that sort even before it happened, as I remember. That started your first flood. When the ammonia cloud passed on into Low Alpha the solution around you began to lose ammonia by evaporation, and finally the mixture which was left below its freezing point. I’m guessing that the fog encountered by Stakendee is more ammonia, and provided the material for the rivulet he found. As it meets the water ice near you they dissolve mutually until the mixture is too dilute in ammonia to be liquid any more — this forms the dam your men described, and the liquid ammonia still coming has to find a way around. I would suggest that if you can find a way to divert that stream over to your ship, and if there proves to be enough of it, your melting-out problem would be solved.” Benj, listening in spite of his mood, thought of wax flowing from a guttering candle and freezing first on one front and then another. He wondered wheter the computers would handle the two situations alike, if ammonia and heat were handled the same way in the two problems.

“You mean I shouldn’t worry about a possible flood?” Dondragmer’s voice finally returned.

“I’m guessing not,” replied McDevitt. “If I’m right about this picture, and we’ve been talking it over a lot up here, the fog that Stakendee met should have passed over the snow plain you from — or what’s left of it — and if it were going to cause another flood that should have reached you by now. I suspect the snow, which was high enough to spill into the pass you were washed through, was all used up on the first flood, and that’s why you were finally left stranded where you are. If the new fog hasn’t reached you yet by the way, I think I know the reason.

The place where Stakendee met it is a few feet higher than you are, and air flowing form the west is coming downhill. With Dhrawn’s gravity and that air composition there’d be a terrific foehn effect — adiabatic heating as the pressure rises — and the stuff is probably evaporating just as it gets to the place where Stakendee met it.”

Dondragmer took a while to digest this. For a few seconds after the normal delay time, McDevitt wondered wheter he had made himself clear; then another question came through.

“But if the ammonia fog were simply evaporating, the gas would still be there, and must be in the air around us now. Why isn’t it melting the ice just as effectively as though ii were in liquid drops? Is some physical law operating which I missed in the College?”

“I’m not sure where state and concentration would make all that much difference, just from memory,” admitted the meteorologist. “When Borndender gets the new data up here I’ll feed the whole works into the machine to see wheter this guess of our s is ignoring too many facts. On the basis of what I have now, I still think it’s a reasonable one, but I admit it has its fuzzy aspects. There are just too many variables; with only water they are practically infinite, if you’ll forgive a loose use of the word, and with water and ammonia together the number is squared, if not worse.

“To shift from abstract to concrete, I can see Stakendee’s screen and he’s still going along beside that streamlet in the fog; he hasn’t reached the source, but I haven’t seen any other watercourses feeding in from either side. It’s only a couple of your body-lengths wide, and has stayed about the same all along.”

“That’s a relief,” came the eventual response. I suppose if a real flood were coming that river would be some indication. Very well, I’ll report again as soon as Borndender has his information. Please keep watching Stakendee. I’m going outside again to checked under the hull; I was interrupted before.” The meteorologist had wanted to say more, but was silenced by the realization that Dondragmer would not be there to hear his words by the time they arrived. He may also have been feeling some sympathy for Benj.

They watched eagerly, the man almost as concerned as the boy, for the red-and-blank inchworm to appear on the side of the hull within range of the pickup. It was not visible all the way to the ground, since Dondragmer had to go forward directly under the bride and out of the field of view; but they saw him again near the point where the rope which had been used to get him out a few minutes earlier was still snubbed around one of Borndender’s bending posts.

They watched him swarm down the line into the pit. A Mesklinite hanging on a rope about the thickness of a six-pound nylon fishline, and free to swing pendulum-style in forty Earth gravities, is quite a sight even when the distance he has to climb is not much greater than his own body length. Even Benj stopped thinking about Beetchermarlf for a moment.

The captain was no longer worried about the ice; it was presumably frozen all the way to the bottom by now, and he went straight toward the cruiser without bothering to stay on the stones. He slowed a trifle as he drew near, eyeing the cavity in front of him thoughtfully.

Practically, the Kwembly was still frozen in, of course. The melted area had reached her trucks for a distance of some sixty feet fore and aft, but the ice was still above the mattress beyond those limits and on the port side. Even within that range, the lower part of the treads had still been an inch or two under water when the heater gave out. Beetchermarlf’s control cables had been largely freed, but of those helmsman himself there was no sigh whatever. Dondragmer had no hope of finding the two alive under the Kwembly; they would obviously have emerged long ago had this been the case. The captain would not have offered large odds on the chance of finding bodies, either. Like McDevitt, he knew that there was an unevaluable probability that the crewmen had not been under the hull at all when the freeze-up occurred. There had, after all, been two other unexplained disappearances; Dondragmer’s educated guess at the whereabouts of Kervenser and Reffel was far from a certainty even in his own mind.

It was dark underneath, out of range of the floods. Dondragmer could still see a response to abrupt changes of illumination was a normal adaptation to Mesklin’s eighteen-minute rotation period — but some details escaped him. He saw the condition of the two trucks whose treads had been ruined by the helmsmen’s escape efforts, and he saw the piles of stones they had made in the attempt to confine the hot water in a small area; but he missed the slash in the mattress where the two had taken final refuge.

What he saw made it obvious, however, that at least one of the two missing men had been there for a while. Since the volume which had evidently not frozen at all was small, the most likely guess seemed to be that they had been caught in the encroaching ice after doing the work which could be seen — though it was certainly hard to see just how this could have happened. The captain made a rapid check the full length of the ice-walled cavern, examining every exposed truck for and aft, top and sides. It never occurred to him to look higher. He had, after all, taken part in the building of the huge vehicle; he knew there was nowhere higher to go.

He emerged at last into the light and the view field of the communicator. His appearance alone was something of a relief to Benj; the boy had concluded, just as the captain had, that the helmsmen could not be under the hull alive, and he had rather expected to see Dondragmer pulling bodies after him. The relief was only relative, of course; the burning question remained — where was Beetchermarlf?

The captain was climbing out of the put and leaving the field of view. Maybe he was coming back to the bridge to make a detailed report. Benj, now showing clearly the symptoms of sleeplessness, waited silently with his fists clenched.

But Dondragmer’s voice did not come. The captain had planned to tell the human observers what he had found, indeed; but on the way up the side of the hull, visible to them but unrecognized, he paused to talk to one of the men who was chipping ice from the lock exit.

“I only got what the human Hoffman told me about what you found when your part first reached that stream,” he said. “Are there any more details I should know? I have the picture that you had just met someone at the point where the ground was almost up into the fog, but I never heard from Hoffman wheter it was Reffel or Kervenser. Who was it? And are the helicopters all right? There was an interruption just then — someone up above apparently caught sight of Kabremm back at the Esket, and I cut in myself because the stream you had found worried me. That’s why I split your part. Who was it you found?”

“It was Kabremm.”

Dondragmer almost lost his grip on the holdfasts.

“Kabremm? Destigmet’s first officer? Her? And a human being recognized him — it was your screen he was seen on?”

“It sounded that way, sir. He didn’t see our communicator until it was too late, and none of us thought for an instant that there was a chance of a human being telling one of us from another — at least, not between the time we recognized him ourselves and the time it was too late.”

“but what is he doing here? This planet has three times the area of Mesklin; there are plenty of other places to be. I knew the commander was going to hit shoals sooner or later playing this Esket trick on the human beings, but I certainly never thought he’d ground on such silly bad luck as this.”

“It’s not entirely chance, sir. Kabremm didn’t have time to tell us much, we took advantage of your order about exploring the stream to break up and get him out of sight of the communicator — but I understand this river has been giving trouble most of the night. There’s a buildup of ice five million or so cables downstream, no very far from the Esket, and a sort of ice river is flowing slowly into the hot lands. The Esket and the mines and the farms are right in its way.”

“Farms?”

“That’s what Destigmet calls them. Practically a Settlement with hydroponic tanks — a sort of oversized life — support right that doesn’t have to balance as closely as the cruiser ones do. Anyway, Destigmet sent out the Gwelf under Kabremm to explore upstream in the hop of finding out how bad the ice river was likely to get. They had grounded where we met them because of the fog — they could have flown over it easily enough, but they couldn’t have seen the riverbed through it.”

“Then they must have arrived since the flood that brought us here, and if they were examining the riverbed they flew right over us. How could they possibly have missed out light?

“I don’t know, sir. If Kabremm told Stakendee, I didn’t hear him.”

Dondragmer gave the rippling equivalent of a shrug. “Probably he did, and made it a point to stay out of reach of our human eyes. I suppose Kervenser and Reffel ran into the Gwelf, and Reffel used his vision shutter to keep the dirigible from human sight; but I still don’t see why Kervenser, at least, didn’t come back to report.”

“I’m afraid I don’t know about any of that, either,” replied the sailor.

“Then the river we’ve washed into must bend north, if it leads to the Esket area.” The other judged correctly that Dondragmer was merely thinking out loud, and made no comment. The captain pondered silently for another minute or two. “The big question is wheter the commander heard it, too, when the human — I suppose it was Mrs. Hoffman, she is about the only one that familiar with us — called out Kabremm’s name. If he did, he probably thought that someone had been careless back at the Esket, as I did. You heard her on your set and I heard her one mine, but that’s reasonable; they’re both Kwembly communicators, and probably all in one place up at the station. We don’t know, though, about their links with the Settlement. I’ve heard that all their communication equipment is in one room, but it must be a big room and the different sets may not be very close together. It’s equally possible that Barl did, or did not, hear her.

“What it all shapes up to is that one human being has recognized an Esket crew member, not only alive long after they were all supposed to be dead , but five or six million cables from the place where they presumably died. We don’t know how certain this human was of the identification; certain enough to call Kabremm’s name on impulse, maybe no certain enough to report to other humans without further checking. After all, such a report could sound pretty silly without strong evidence. We don’t know wheter Barlennan knows of this slip; and worst of all, we can’t tell what he’s likely to answer when questions about it come his way. His safest and most probably line would be complete ignorance seasoned with shocked amazement, and I suppose he’ll realize that, but I certainly wish I could talk to him without having human beings along the corridor.”

“Wouldn’t your best line be complete ignorance, too?” queried the sailor. Like all the Mesklinites on Dhrawn, he was fully aware of the trick being played on the human beings to get the Esket off their books. He also knew as much of the reason for it as Barlennan had made public. Very few — Dondragmer not among them — had been let all the way into the commander’s thinking.

“It would be,” the captain answered, “but I can’t get away with it. I’ve already told the humans about your return. The most hopeful notion I have at the moment centers around the possibility of mistaken identity; how sure is Mrs. Hoffman, or whoever it was — the more I think of it, the more certain I am it was her voice; I wish I’d been paying more attention — that it was really Kabremm she saw? How does she tell us apart anyway? Coloration pattern? Walking style? Can she recognize any of us at a glance, or just a few whom she knows especially well, or does one have to have a missing leg, or no red on his head?

“I’d use that line, except that I just don’t know what Barlennan is going to do — or if he’s in a position to have to do anything. If he didn’t hear that call, and the human is really suspicious, it wouldn’t take many trick questions to catch him out. Even if he did, and is warned, he’s in trouble, because then he’ll be worrying about what I’m likely to say. That’s the sort of thing I’ve been worried about ever since the beginning; with all long distance communication having to go through the humans, coordination of this trick was bound to get difficult. If we could have avoided slips until Destigmet had made enough wire to reach form the mines to the Settlement, and gotten it strung, the chances of getting away with the while thing would have gone up a lot.”

“all that ever worried me,” replied the sailor as he resumed his chipping at the ice, “was what would happen when they did learn about what we were doing. I don’t suppose they’d really abandon us here — human beings don’t seem to be quite that firm, even on business deals — but they could as long as we don’t have spaceships of our own.”

“That was the basic argument the commander gave, as you know,” returned Dondragmer. “They seem to be dependable beings, and personally I’d trust them as far as I would anyone, but they are different in some ways and one is never quite sure what they will consider an adequate motive, or excuse, for some action. That’s why the commander wanted to get us self-supporting on this world without their knowing about it. I’m glad Destigmet has done so well with his ‘farm.’ The mines were a long step, and the dirigibles were a triumph; but we’re a long, long way from being able either to make, or to do without, the human-made energy boxes; and I sometimes wonders if the commander realizes just how beyond us those are.

“But that’s not the immediate problem. I’m going to have to talk to the station again. I suppose my best policy is not to mention Kabremm unless they ask me, and if they do, try to convince them it was mistaken identity.”

“Not mentioning it might make them suspicious,” pointed out the sailor.

“It would be consistent with the mistaken-identify line, though. Thanks for the point; I hadn’t considered it. Carry on, and give me a wave on the bridge when the lock is clear.”

The sailor gestured agreement, and Dondragmer at last got to the bridge.

There was plenty to say to the human beings without mentioning Kabremm, and the captain began saying it as soon as he had doffed his airsuit.

“At least one of the helmsmen was under the hull for a while, and probably both of them were, but I couldn’t find any trace of either one just now except work they had done trying to get out — at least, I can’t see any other reason for it; it certainly wasn’t an assigned job. They wrecked, or nearly wrecked, two of the trucks in the process. Much of the space under there is still frozen up, and I’m afraid they’re probably in the ice. We’ll search more carefully, with lights, when the crew comes back and I can spare the men. The water, or whatever it was, that was boiled away by our heater coated an ice layer on the hull which has sealed the main lock; we must get that back into service as quickly as possible. There is much equipment which can’t now be moved out if we have to abandon the Kwembly, and much which can’t be moved back inside if we don’t, because it won’t go through any other lock.

“Also, the use of that heater caused the melting of about a body length of the radiator wire, and I don’t see how we are going to restore the refrigerator to service if we do get the Kwembly free. This may not be of immediate importance, but, if we do get back into service, we’d have to think twice about going very far into Low Alpha without refrigeration. One of the few things you people seem really sure of is that the low-pressure area is caused by high temperature, presumably from internal heat, and I know you set a very high priority on finding out about it. There is virtually no metal in the ship, and one of the few things I understand about that refrigerator is that its outside radiator must be an electrical conductor. Right?”

The captain waited for his reply with some interest. He hoped that the technical problem would divert the human interest from the whole question of Kabremm and the Esket; but he knew that this would not have worked if he himself were on the other end of the conversation. Of course, Benj Hoffman was young — but he was probably not the only person there.

At least it was Benj who answered; but he didn’t seem much interested in technology.

“if you think they’re in the ice, shouldn’t people get down there right away and look? They might still be alive in those suits, mightn’t they? You said a while ago that no one had ever found out, but that at least seems to me that the longer you put off finding them, the less chance they have of living. Isn’t that the most important problem right now?”

Easy’s voice followed on, before Dondragmer could frame an answer; she seemed to be talking to her son as well as to the captain.

“It’s not quite the most important. The Kwembly is synonymous with the lives of its entire crew, son. The captain is not being callous about his men. I know you feel about your friend, and as a feeling it’s perfectly proper; but a person with responsibility has to think as well as feel.”

“I though you were on my side.”

“I feel with you very strongly, but that doesn’t keep me from knowing the captain is right.”

“I suppose Barlennan would act the same way. Have you asked him what Dondragmer should do?”

“I haven’t asked him, but he knows the situation — if you don’t think so, there’s the microphone; give your side of it to him. Personally I don’t think he’d dream of overriding Dondragmer or any other cruiser captain in such a matter, when he himself isn’t on the scene.” There was a pause while Benj hunted for words to refute this claim; he was still young enough to think that there was something fundamentally inhuman about thinking more than one step ahead at a time. After ten seconds or so of silence, Dondragmer assumed that the station transmission was over and a reply was in order.

Mrs. Hoffman — I believe I recognized her voice — is quite right, Benj. I have not forgotten Beetchermarlf, any more than you have forgotten Takoorch, although it is obvious even to me that you are thinking less of him. It is simply that I have more lives to consider than theirs. I’m afraid I’ll have to leave any more discussion of it to her, right now. Would you please get some of your engineers thinking about the problem of my refrigerator? And you probably will see Borndender climbing the hull with his sample; the report about the stream should come up in a few minutes. If Mr. McDevitt is still there, please have him stand by; if he was left for any reason, will you please have him come back?”

The watchers had seen a climbing Mesklinite as the captain had said, though not even Easy had recognized Borndender. Before Benj could say anything, McDevitt answered, “I’m still here, Captain. We’ll wait, and as soon as the analysis is here I’ll take it to the computer .If Borndender has any temperature and pressure readings to send along with his chemical information, they will all be useful.”

The boy was still unhappy, but even he could see that this was not the time for further interruption. Also, his father had just entered the communication room, accompanied by Aucoin and Mersereau. Benj tactfully slid out of the seat in front of the bridge screen to make room for the planner, though he was too angry and upset to hope that his badly-chosen words of the last few minutes would go unmentioned. He was not even relieved when Easy, in bringing the newcomers up to date, left the question of the missing helmsmen unmentioned.

Her account was interrupted by Dondragmer’s voice.

“Borndender says that he has checked the density and boiling temperature of the liquid in the stream, and that it about three eights ammonia and five eights water. He also says that the outside temperature is 71, the pressure 26.6 standard atmospheres — our standard, of course — and the wind a little north of west, 21 degrees to be more precise, at 120 cables per hour. A very light breeze. Will that suffice for your computer?”

“It will all help. I’m on my way,” replied McDevitt as he slid from his seat and headed toward the door. As he reached the exit he looked back thoughtfully, paused and called, “Benj, I hate to pull you from the screens right now, but I think you’d better come with me for a while. You should check me on the input, and you can bring the preliminary run back to report to Dondragmer while I do the recheck.”

Easy kept her approval to herself as Benj silently followed his nominal chief. The approval was divided between McDevitt, for veering the youngster’s attention in a safe direction, and her son for a better example of self-control than she had really expected. She had known, of course, that he would not whine or throw a tantrum, but she would not have been surprised if he had come up with a reasonable excuse for staying at the screens.

Aucoin paid no attention to the exchange; he was still trying to clarify his picture of the current state of affairs.

“I take it that none of the missing personnel has turned up,” he said. “All right, I’ve been thinking it over. I assume that Barlennan had been up to date, as we agreed a few hours ago. Is there anything else which has happened, and which he has been told about but I haven’t?” Easy looked up quickly, trying to catch evidence of the resentment on the administrator’s face, but he seemed unaware that his words could possibly have been interpreted as criticism. She thought quickly before answering.

“Yes. Roughly three hours ago, Cavanaugh reported action on one of the Esket screens. He saw a couple of objects sliding or rolling across the floor of the laboratory from one side of the screen to the other. I started watching but nothing has happened there since.

“Then an hour or so later, the search party Don had out for the missing helicopters met a Mesklinite which we, of course, took at first to be one of the pilots; but when he got close to the transmitter I recognized Kabremm, the first officer of the Esket.”

“Six thousand miles from where the Esket’s crew is supposed to have died?”

“Yes.”

“What was his comment?”

“Nothing specific. He acknowledged the whole report, but didn’t offer any theories.”

“He didn’t even ask you how sure you were of the identification? Or on what you based it?”

“No.”

“Well, if you don’t mind I’d like to. Just how did you know Kabremm, and how certain are you that you were right?”

“I knew him, before the loss of the Esket, well enough to make it difficult to say what I went by — he’s simply distinctive, in color pattern and stance and walk, just as you and Ib and Boyd are.”

“The light was good enough for color pattern? It’s night down there.”

There were lights near the set — though most of them were in front of it, in the field of view, and Kabremm was most backlighted.”

“Do you know the two missing men well enough to be certain it was neither of them — do you know neither one looks like Kabremm?”

Easy flushed. “It certainly wasn’t Kervenser, Don’s first officer. I’m afraid I don’t know Reffel well enough to be sure, that possibility hadn’t occurred to me. I just saw the man, and called out his name pretty much by reflex. After that I couldn’t do much but make a report; the Settlement microphone was alive at the time, and Barlennan, or whoever was on duty, could hardly have helped hearing me.”

“Then there is a reasonable chance that Barlennan’s lack of comment was a polite attempt to avoid embarrassing you — to gloss over what may have seemed to him a silly mistake?”

“I suppose it’s possible.” Easy could not make herself sound anything but doubtful, but even she knew that her opinion was unlikely to be objective.

“Then I think,” Aucoin said slowly and thoughtfully, “that I’d better talk to Barlennan myself. You say nothing more has happened at the Esket since Cavanaugh saw those objects rolling?”

“ I haven’t seen anything. The bridge set, of course, is looking out into darkness, but the other three are lighted perfectly well and have shown no change except that one.”

“All right. Barlennan knows our language well enough, in my experience, so I won’t need you to translate.”

“Oh, no, he’ll understand you. You mean you’d rather I left?”

“No, no, certainly not. In fact, it would be better if you listened and warned me if you thought there might be any misunderstanding developing.” Aucoin reached for the Settlement microphone switch, but glanced once more at Easy before closing it. “You don’t mind, do you, if I make sure of Barlennan’s opinion about your identification of Kabremm? I think our main problem is what to do about the Kwembly, but I’d like to settle that point, too. After you brought the matter up with him, I’d hate Barlennan to get the idea that we were trying to… well, censor anything, to phrase it the way Ib did at the meeting.” He turned away and sent his call toward Dhrawn.

Barlennan was in the communicator chamber at the Settlement, so no time was lost reaching him. Aucoin identified himself, once he was sure the commander was at the other end, and began his speech.

Easy, Ib, and Boyd found it annoyingly repetitious, but they had to admire the skill with which the planner emphasized his own ideas. Essentially, he was trying to forestall any suggestion that another vehicle be sent to the rescue of the Kwembly, without himself suggesting such a thing. It was a very difficult piece of language manipulation, and even knowing that the matter had been uppermost in Aucoin’s mind ever since the conference, so that it was anything but an impromptu speech, did not detract from its merits as a work of art — as Ib remarked later. He did mention Easy’s identification of Kabremm to the commander, but so fleetingly that she almost failed to recognize the item. He didn’t actually say that she must have been mistaken, but he was obviously attaching no importance to the incident.

It was a pity, as Easy remarked later, that such polished eloquence was so completely wasted. Of course Aucoin had no more way of knowing than did the other human beings that the identification of Kabremm was Barlennan’s main current worry, and that for two hours he had been concerned with nothing else. Faced with the imminent collapse o his complex scheme, as he suddenly realized with embarrassment, having no ready alternative, he had employed those hours in furious and cogent thought. By the time Aucoin had called, Barlennan had the first step of another plan, and he was waiting so tensely for a chance to put it into operation that he paid little attention to the planner’s beautifully selected words. When a pause came in their deliver, Barlennan had his own speech ready, though it had remarkably little to do with what had just been said.

The pause had not actually been meant as space for an answer; Aucoin had taken a moment to review mentally what he had covered and what should come next. Mersereau, however, caught him as he was about to resume talking.

“That break was long enough to let Barlennan assume you had finished and wanted an answer,” He said. “Better wait. He’ll probably have stared talking before whatever you were just going to say is down there.” The administrator obediently waited; a convention was, after all, a convention. He was prepared to be sarcastic if Mersereau were wrong, but the Mesklinite commander’s voice came though on the scheduled second-closer to it than they would have been willing to be, Ib and Easy thought later.

“I’ve been thinking deeply ever since Mrs. Hoffman told me about Kabremm,” he said, “an I’ve been able to come up with only one theory. As you know, we’ve always had to carry in mind the possibility that there was an intelligent species here on Dhrawn. Your scientists were certain there was highly organized life even before the landing, because of the oxygen-rich air, they said. I know we haven’t run into anything but simple plants and practically microscopic animals, but the Esket had ventured farther into Low Alpha than any of the other cruisers, and conditions are different there; certainly the temperature is higher, and we don’t know how that may change other factors.

“Until now, the chance that the Esket had met intelligent opposition was only one possibility, with no more to support it than any other idea we could dream up. However, as your own people have pointed out repeatedly, none of her crew could have lived this long without the cruiser’s support system or something like it; and they certainly couldn’t have traveled from where the Esket still is — as far as we can tell — to Dondragmer’s neighborhood. It seems to me that Kabremm’s presence there is convincing evidence that Destigmet’s crew has encountered and been captured by natives of Dhrawn. I don’t know hwy Kabremm was free enough to meet that search part; may he escaped, but it’s hard to see how he would have dared to try under the circumstances. More likely they sent him deliberately to make contact. I wish very much that you’d pass this idea long to Dondragmer for his opinion, and have him find out what he can from Kabremm — if he is still available. You haven’t told me wheter he was still with the search party or not. Will you do that?”

Several pieces fell into place in Ib Hoffman’s mental jigsaw puzzle. His silent applause went unnoticed, even by Easy.