Star Light

4: SMALL TALK

It was a curious, helpless sensation for Beetchermarlf. The Kwembly’s helm was connected to the trucks by simple pulley-and-cord rigging; even Mesklinite muscles could not turn the trucks when the vehicle was at rest, and, while forward motion made steering possible, it certainly did not make it easy. Now, as the vehicle floated with the driving units clear of the bottom, the helm flopped limply in response to a casual nudge or even to a slight roll of the hull. In theory, the cruiser was maneuverable at sea, but this required installing driving paddles on the treads, something most easily done on land. Dondragmer had thought fleetingly, as he realized they were adrift, of sending out air suited men to attempt the task, then decided it wasn’t worth the risk even if everyone were attached solidly to the hull by life-lines. It was likely enough, as far as anyone could tell, that they might reach the end or the edge of the river or lake or whatever they were floating on before any such job could be completed, anyway. If men were outside when that happened, life-lines would be of little use.

The same thoughts had crossed the helmsman’s mind as he lay at his station, but he did not voice them. Beetchermarlf was young, but not so young as to assume that no one else could recognize the obvious. He was quite prepared to grant his captain’s professional competence.

As the minutes slipped by, however, he began to worry at Dondragmer’s failure to issue any orders. Something should be possible; they couldn’t just drift eastward. He glanced at the compass; yes, eastward, indefinitely. There had been hills that way according to the last flight reports, the same hills which had bordered the snow field on their left, sometimes showing slightly above the distant horizon, for the last three or four thousand miles. Judging by their color they were rock, not ice. If the surface the Kwembly was floating on was simply melted snow field, they almost had to hit something soon. Beetchermarlf had no more idea than anyone else how fast they were going but his confidence in the strength of the hull matched that of the captain. He had no more wish to strike a reef on Dhrawn than he had ever had on Mesklin.

Anyhow, the wind should not move them too fast, given the air den-sky The top of the hull was smoothly curved except for the bridge, and the trucks on the bottom should give plenty of drag. As far as the air scouts had been able to tell, the snow field had been level, so the liquid itself shouldn’t be moving. Come to think of it, the outside pressure should give a check on that. The helmsman stirred at the thought, glanced up at the captain, hesitated, and then spoke.

“Sir, how about checking hull-squeeze watch? If there is any current where we’re floating, we’d have to be going downhill, and that should show—” Dondragmer interrupted.

“But the surface was level — no, you’re right. We should check.” He reared up to the bank of speaking tubes and called the laboratory. “Born, how is the pressure? You’re keeping track, of course.”

“Of course, Captain. Both bow and stern safety bladders have been expanding ever since we began to float. We’ve descended about six body lengths in twice that many minutes. I’m about ready to tap more argon.

Dondragmer acknowledged, and looked back at his helmsman.

“Good for you. I should have thought of that. That means we are being carried by current as well as wind and all bets on speed, distance, and where we stop are off. There couldn’t be a current unless the air scouts missed a slope, and if there’s a slope this plateau must drain somewhere.”

“We’re secure for rough travel, Sir. I don’t see what else we can do.”

“There’s one thing,” Dondragmer said grimly He reared to the tubes again, and emitted the siren-like general quarters call. Reasonably sure that all were listening, he pulled his head back so as to be equally distant from all the tubes, and spoke loudly enough to get through them all.

“All hands into air suits as quickly as possible. You are relieved from stations for that purpose, but get back as soon as you can.” He lowered himself to his command bench and addressed Beetchermarlf. “Get your suit and mine, and bring them back here. Quickly!”

The helmsman was back with the garments in ninety seconds. He started to assist the captain with his, but was dismissed by an emphatic gesture and went to work on his own. In two minutes both, protected except for head covering, were back at their stations.

The haste, as it turned out, was unnecessary More minutes passed while Beetchermarlf toyed with the useless helm, and Dondragmer wonde₁cd whether the human scientists were ever going to come through with any information and what use it was likely to be if they did. He hoped that satellite fixes could give him some idea of the Kwembly’s speed; it would, he thought rather cynically, be nice to know how hard they were likely to hit whatever finally stopped them. Such fixes were, he knew, hard to get on order; there were over thirty of the “shadow satellites” in orbit but they were less than three thousand miles above the surface. No attempt had been made to arrange their orbits so that their limited fields of visual and microwave coverage would be either uniform or complete; communication was not their primary purpose. The main human base, in synchronous orbit over six million miles above the Settlement meridian, was supposed to need no help with that task. Also, the ninety-plus mile per second orbital speed of the lower satellites, helpful though the human observers claimed it to be for moving-baseline location checking, still seemed to Dondragmer an inevitable cause of difficulty He was not at all hopeful about getting his speed from this source. That was just as well, because he never did.

Once, about half an hour after they had gone adrift, a brief shudder ran through the Kwembly and the captain duly reported to the station that they had probably touched bottom. Everyone else on board made the same assumption and tension began to mount.

There was a little warning just before the end. A hoot from the laboratory speaking tube was followed by a report that pressure had started to rise more rapidly, and that an additional release of argon into the ship’s atmosphere had been necessary to keep the safety bladders from rupturing. There was no sensation of increasing speed, but the implication of the report was plain enough. They were descending more rapidly How fast were they going horizontally? The captain and helmsman looked at each other, not asking the question aloud but reading it in each other’s expressions. More minutes passed; the tension mounted, chelae gripping stanchions and holdfasts ever more tightly.

Then there was a thunderous clang, and the hull swerved abruptly; another, and it tilted sharply to starboard. For several seconds it pitched violently, and those near bow and stern could feel it yawing as well, though the fog still blocked any outside view which might have explained the sensation. Then there was another, much louder clang and the Kwembly rolled some sixty degrees to starboard; but this time she did not recover. Scraping, grinding sounds suggested that she was moving slightly, but no real change of attitude accompanied them. For the first time, the sound of liquid rushing past the hull became noticeable.

Dondragmer and his companion were unhurt. To beings who regarded two hundred Earth gravities as normal and six hundred as a most minor inconvenience, that sort of acceleration meant nothing. They had not even lost their grips, and were still at their posts. The captain was not worried about direct injuries to his crew. His first words showed that he was considering matters much further ahead.

“By stations, report!” he bellowed into the speaking tubes. “Check hull soundness at all points, and report all cracks, open breaks, dents, and other evidence for leaks. Lab personnel to emergency stations, and check for oxygen. Life-support, cut tank circulation until the oxygen check is done. Now!”

Apparently the speaking tubes were intact, at least. Hoots of response began to return immediately As the reports accumulated, Beetchermarlf began to relax. He had not really expected the shell which protected him from Dhrawn’s poisonous air to withstand anything like such a shock and his respect for alien engineering went up several grades. He had regarded artificial structures of any sort as normally inferior in strength and durability to any living body He had, of course, excellent reason for such an attitude. Nevertheless, it appeared when all the reports were finally in, that there were no major structural failures or even visible cracks. Whether the normal leaks, unavoidable in a structure which had to have entrances for personnel and equipment, not to mention hull openings for instruments and control lines, were any worse than they had been, would not be known for a while. Pressure monitoring and oxygen checking would of course continue as normal routine.

Power was still on, which surprised no one. The twenty-five independent hydrogen converters, identical modules which could be moved from any energy-using site in the Kwembly to any other, were solid-state devices with no moving parts larger than the molecules of gaseous fuel which were fed into them. They could have been placed under the hammer of a power forge without damage.

Most of the outside lights were gone, or at least inoperative, though these could be replaced. Some were still working, however, and from the submerged end of the bridge it was possible to see out. Fog still blocked the view from the upper end. Dondragmer made his way very gingerly to the low end and took a brief look at the conglomeration of rounded rocks with diameters from half his own length to twenty times that, into which his craft had managed to wedge itself. Then he climbed carefully back to his station, energized the sound system of his radio and transmitted the report which Barlennan was to hear a little over a minute later. Without waiting for an answer, he began issuing orders to the helmsman.

“Beetch, stand by here in case the men have anything to say I’m going to make a complete check myself, especially of the air locks. With all there is to be said for our design, we didn’t have this much of a roll in mind when we settled on it. We may only be able to use the small emergency locks, since the main one seems to be underneath us at the moment. It may be blocked on the outside even if we can open the inner door and find the septum still submerged. Chatter with the human beings if you want. The more of us who can use their language and the more of them who can use ours, the better. You have the bridge.”

Dondragmer made the habitual, but now rather futile, gesture of rapping on the hatch for clearance; then he opened it and disappeared, leaving Beetchermarlf alone.

The helmsman had no urge at the moment for idle talk with the station above. His captain had left him with too much to think about.

He was not exactly delighted at being left in charge of the bridge, under the circumstances. He was not even too concerned about the main air lock’s being blocked; the smaller ones were adequate, though not for life-support equipment, he suddenly remembered. Well, at the moment the desirability of going out seemed very small but if the Kwembly were permanently disabled that need would have to be faced.

The real question, in that event, was just what good going outside would do. The twelve thousand miles or so, which Beetchermarlf thought of as nearly fourteen million cables, was a long, long walk, especially with a load of life-support equipment. Without that apparatus it was not to be thought of. Mesklinites were amazingly tough organisms mechanically and had a temperature tolerance range which was still disbelieved by many human biologists, but oxygen was another matter. Its partial pressure outside at the moment was presumably about fifty pounds per square inch, quite enough to kill any member of the Kwembly’s crew in seconds.

The most desirable thing at the moment was to get the big machine back on her treads. How, and whether, this could be done’ would depend largely on the stream of liquid flowing past the stranded hull. Working outside in that current might not be impossible, but it was going to be difficult and dangerous. The air suited Mesklinites would have to be heavily ballasted to stay put at any task and life-lines would complicate the details.

The stream might not, of course, be permanent. It had apparently just come into existence with the change in weather and it might cease flowing as suddenly However, as Beetchermarlf well knew, there is a difference between weather and climate. If the river were seasonal, its “temporary” nature might still turn out to be too long for the Mesklinites; Dhrawn’s year was some eight times as long as that of Earth and over one and a half times that of Mesklin.

This was an area where human information might be useful. The aliens had been observing Dhrawn carefully for nearly half of one of its years and casually for much longer. They should have some idea of its seasons. The helmsman wondered whether it would be out of order for him to put such a question to someone in the orbiting station, since the captain had not. Of course, the captain had said he could use the radio for chatter and had made no mention of what might or might not be said.

The idea that there was anything except the Esket incident which should not be discussed with the human sponsors of the Dhrawn expedition had not gone down the chain of command as far as Beetchermarlf. The young helmsman had almost made up his mind to initiate a call to the station when the radio beside him spoke. It spoke, furthermore, in his own language, though the accent was not above reproach.

“Dondragmer. I know you must be busy but if you can’t talk now I’d be glad if someone else could. I am Benjamin Hoffman, an assistant in the aerology lab here at the station, and I’d like two kinds of help if anyone can find time to give it.

“For myself, I’d like practice in language; it must be obvious that I need it. For the lab, we’re in a very embarrassing position. Twice in a row we’ve worked out weather predictions for your part of the planet which have been way, way off We just don’t have enough detailed information to do the job properly The observations we can make from here don’t resolve enough and there aren’t anywhere near enough reporting stations down there. You and the others have planted a lot of automatics on your trips, but they still don’t cover much of the planet, as you know. Since good predictions will be as useful to you as they will be to us, I thought maybe I could talk things out in real detail with some of your scientists and maybe work out the weather patterns where you know enough to supplement the background calculations and really get good forecasts, at least right in your neighborhood.”

The helmsman replied eagerly.

“The captain is not on the bridge, Benjaminhoffman. I am Beetchermarlf, one of the helmsmen, now on watch. Speaking for myself, I should be very glad to exchange language practice when duties permit, as now. I am afraid the scientists will be pretty busy for a while; I may be myself, most of the time. We are having some trouble, though you may not know all the details. The captain did not have time for the full story in the report I heard him send up a few minutes ago. I will give you as complete a picture as I can of the situation and some thoughts which have occurred to me since the captain left the bridge. You might record the information for your people and comment on my ideas if you wish. If you don’t think they’re worth mentioning to the captain, I won’t. He’ll be busy enough without them anyway I’ll wait until you tell me you’re ready to record, or that you don’t want to, before I start.” Beetchermarlf paused, not entirely for the reason he had just given. He suddenly wondered whether he should bother one of these alien beings with his own ideas which began to seem crude and poorly worked out to him.

Still, the factual reports had to be useful. There was much detailed information about the Kwembly’s present situation which the men could not possibly know yet. By the time Benj’s approval came from the speaker, the helmsman had recovered some of his self-confidence.

“That will be fine, Beetchermarlf. I’m ready to tape your report. I was going to anyway, for language practice. I’ll pass on whatever you want. Even if your weather men are busy, maybe the two of us could try to do what I suggested with the weather information. You can probably get their measurements, and you’re on the spot and can see everything and if you’re one of the sailors Barlennan recruited on Mesklin you certainly know something about weather. For all I know, you may have spent a couple of my lifetimes in that place on Mesklin learning engineering and research methods. Come ahead; I’m ready here.”

This speech completed the restoration of Beetchermarlf’s morale. It had been only ten of Mesklin’s years since alien education had started for a selected few of its natives. This human being must be five years old or younger. Of course, there was no telling what that might mean in the way of maturity for his species, and one could not very well ask; but in spite of the aura of super-normality which tended to surround all the aliens, one just did not think of a five-year-old as a superior being.

As relaxed as anyone could well be on a floor with a sixty-degree tilt, the sailor began his description of the Kwembly’s situation. He gave a detailed account of the trip down what now had to be recognized as a river, and of its conclusion. He described minutely what could now be seen from the bridge. He explained how they were now stranded off their tracks, and emphasized the situation which faced the crew if this could not be corrected. He even detailed the structure of the air-locks, and explained why the main one was probably unusable and the others possibly so.

“It will help a great deal in the captain’s planning,” he concluded, “if we can have some trustworthy estimate of what will happen to this river, and especially whether and when it will run dry If the whole snow field melts at this season and runs off the plateau through this one drain, I suppose we’re here for the best part of a year and will have to plan accordingly If you can give any hope that we can work on dry land without having to wait too long, though, it would be very good to know.”

Benj was rather longer than sixty-four seconds in answering this; he, too, had been given material for thought.

“I have your details on tape, and have sent it up to Planning,” his words came through at last. “They’ll distribute copies to the labs. Even I can see that figuring out the life story of your river is going to be a nasty job; maybe an impossible one without a lot more knowledge. As you say, the whole snow field might be starting a seasonal melt. If the waters of North America had to drain out through one river you’d be there for a long time. I don’t know how much of the place your aerial scout reports cover, and I don’t know how ambiguous the photos from up here may be, but I’ll bet when it’s all down on maps there’ll still be room for argument. Even if everyone agrees on a conclusion, well, we still don’t know much about that planet.”

“But you’ve had so much experience with other planets, many of them!” returned Beetchermarlf. “I should think that would be of some help.”

Again the answer was longer in coming back than light-lag alone would explain.

“Men and their friends have had experience on a lot of planets, that’s true, and I’ve read a good deal of it. The trouble is, practically none of it helps here. There are three kinds of planet, basically. One we call Terrestrial, like my own home; it is small, dense, and practically without hydrogen. The second is the Jovian, or Type Two, which tends to be much larger and much less dense because they have kept most of their hydrogen from the time they originally formed, we think. Those two were the only kinds we knew about before we left our own star’s neighborhood, because they are the only kinds in our system.

“Type Three is very large, very dense, and very hard to account for. Theories which had the Type Ones losing their hydrogen because of their initially small mass, and the Twos keeping theirs because of their greater mass, were fine as long as we’d never heard of the Threes. Our ideas were perfectly satisfactory and convincing as long as we didn’t know too much, if you’ll forgive my sounding like my basic science teacher.

“Type Three is the sort you’re on. There are none of them around any sun with a Type One planet. I suppose there must be a reason for that, but I don’t know what it is. Well, nothing was known about them among the Community races until we learned to travel between stars and began to do it on a large scale, large enough so the principal interest of wandering ships wasn’t just new habitable planets. Even then we couldn’t study them first hand, any more than we could the Jovian worlds. We could send down a few special, very expensive and usually very unreliable robots, but that was all. Your species is the first we’ve ever encountered able to stand the gravity of a Type Three or the pressure of a Type Two, for that matter.

“But isn’t Mesklin a Type Three, by your description? You must know a lot about it by now; you’ve been in touch with our people for something like ten years, and some of you have even landed at the Rim, I mean the equator.

“More like fifty of our years. The trouble is that Mesklin isn’t a Type Three. It’s a peculiar Two. It would have had all the hydrogen of any Jovian world if it hadn’t been for its rotation, that terrific spin which gives your world an eighteen-minute day and a shape like a fried egg. There aren’t any others like it which we’ve found yet, and no intermediate cases that anyone’s recognized, or at least that I’ve heard of That’s why the Community races were willing to go to so much trouble and effort and spend so much time building up contact with your world and setting up this expedition to Dhrawn. We’ll find out a good deal in thirty years or so about that world’s makeup from the neutrino counters in the shadow satellites but the seismic equipment you people have been planting will add a lot of detail and remove a lot of ambiguity So will your chemical work. In five or six of your years we may know enough about that rock ball to make a sensible guess why it’s there or at least, whether it ought to be called a star or a planet.”

“You mean you only made contact with the people of Mesklin so you could learn more about Dhrawn?”

“No, I didn’t mean that at all. People are people and worth getting to know for their own sake — at least, both my parents feel that way, though I’ve met folks who certainly don’t. I don’t think the idea for the Dhrawn project got started until long after your College was under way My mother or Dr. Aucoin could tell you when. It was long before I was born. Of course, when it dawned on someone that you folks could make first-hand investigation of a place like Dhrawn, everyone jumped at the chance.”

This, of course, forced Beetchermarlf to ask a question which he would ordinarily have regarded as a strictly human affair and none of his business, like the matter of how mature a five-year-old should be. It slipped out before he caught himself; for over an hour thereafter he and Benj were arguing over the reasons for such activities as the Dhrawn project and why such a vast amount of effort should be devoted to an activity with no obvious material return in prospect. Benj did not defend his side too well. He was able to give the usual answers about the force of curiosity, which Beetchermarlf could see up to a point; he knew enough history to have heard how close man and several other species had come to extinction from energy starvation before they had developed the hydrogen fusion converter; but he was too young to be really eloquent. He lacked the experience to be able to point out convincingly, even to himself, the complete dependence of any culture on its understanding of the laws of the universe. The conversation never became heated, which would have been difficult in any argument where there is a built-in cooling-down period between any remark and its answer. The only really satisfactory progress made was in Benj’s mastery of Stennish.

The discussion was interrupted by Beetchermarlf’s suddenly becoming aware of a change in his surroundings. For the last hour his entire attention had been on Benj’s words and his own replies. The canted bridge and gurgling liquid had receded to the far background of his mind. He was quite surprised to realize abruptly that the pattern of lights twinkling above him was Orion. The fog had gone.

Alert once more to his surroundings, he noticed that the water line around the bridge seemed just a trifle lower. Ten minutes’ careful watching convinced him that this was so. The river war falling.

Part way through the ten minutes he had, of course, been queried about his sudden silence by Benj, and had given the reason. The boy had immediately notified McDevitt, so that by the time Beetchermarlf was sure about the changing water level there were several interested human beings on hand above to hear about it. The helmsman reported briefly to them on the radio and only then did he call through the speaking tubes for Dondragmer.

The captain was far aft, behind the laboratory section and just forward of the compartment containing the pressure bladder, when the call came. There was a pause after the helmsman finished speaking, and Beetchermarlf expected the captain to come bursting through the bridge hatchway after a few seconds; but Dondragmer did not yield to the temptation. The ports in the rest of the hull, including the compartment where he was, were much too small to permit a clear estimate of the water level, so he had to accept his helmsman’s judgment. Dondragmer was willing to do this, rather to the young sailor’s surprise.

“Keep track as exactly as you can of the rate of fall, until you are relieved,” was his order. “Let me and the human beings know the rate as soon as you can guess it reliably; tell us thereafter whenever you change your estimate.

Beetchermarlf acknowledged the order and clambered across the bridge to a point where he could mark the water line with a scratch on one of the window stanchions. Reporting the action to the captain and the human listeners, he returned to his station keeping his eyes fixed on the mark. The ripples in the liquid were several inches high, settling down only at rare intervals, hence it was some time before he could be at all sure of the change in depth. There were two or three impatient queries from above, which he answered politely in the best he could muster of his limited human language, before Benj reported that he was once more alone except for nonentities watching other cruisers. Most of the time thereafter until Takoorch arrived as bridge relief was spent by the two in describing their home worlds, correcting each other’s misconceptions about Earth and Mesklin by way of language practice and, though neither was fully aware of it, developing a warm personal friendship.

Beetchermarlf returned six hours later to let Takoorch go (actually the interval was twenty-four days by Mesklinite reckoning, a standard watch length) and found that the water was down nearly a foot from his reference mark. Takoorch informed him that the human Benj had just returned from a rest period. The younger helmsman wondered privately just how soon after Tak’s arrival the other had found it was time to take a rest. Naturally he could not ask such a question, but as he settled back into his station he sent a call radiating upward.

“I’m back on, Benj. I don’t know how recently Tak made a report to you, but the water is down over half a body length and the current seems much slower. The wind is nearly calm. Have your scientists anything to report?”

He had time during the answer delay to realize that the last question had been rather pointless, since the principal news wanted from the human scientists was the probable duration of the river, but there was nothing to be done about it now. Besides, maybe they did have something of value.

“Your friend Takoorch did tell us about the water and wind, among a good many other things,” Benj’s voice announced. “It’s good to have you back, Beetch. I haven’t heard anything from the labs, but it seems to me from what you’ve said about the way you’re tipped and the rate the water’s been dropping, and from what I can judge from the cruiser model I have here, that another sixty or seventy hours should leave you dry That’s if the water keeps dropping at the same rate, of course. It might do that if it’s flowing away through a nice smooth channel but I wouldn’t count on that. I hate to sound pessimistic but my guess is that it will slow down before all the liquid is gone.”

“You may be right,” agreed Beetchermarlf. “On the other hand, with the current easing off we can probably work outside safely enough before it’s all gone.” This was a prophetic remark. It was still on its way to the station when a speaking tube hooted for attention.

“Beetchermarlf! Inform the human beings that you will be relieved immediately by Kervenser, and report at once to the starboard after emergency lock in your air suit. I want a check of the trucks and tiller lines. Two others will go with you for safety I am more interested in accuracy than speed. If there is any damage which would be easier to fix while we are still tilted than it would be after we are level, I want to know about it. After you make that check, take a general look around. I want a rough idea of how solidly we are wedged into this position and how much work it will take to level us and get us loose. I will be outside myself making a similar check, but I want another opinion.”

“Yes, sir,” the helmsman responded. He almost forgot to notify Benj, for this time the order was a distinct surprise, not the fact that he was to go outside, but that the captain had chosen him to check his own judgment.

The air suits had been removed when Dondragmer was convinced that the hull was sound, but Beetchermarlf was back into his in half a minute and at the designated lock moments later. The captain and four sailors, all suited, were waiting. The crewmen held coils of rope.

“All right, Beetch,” greeted the captain. “Stakendee will go out first and attach his line to the handiest climbing grip. You will follow, then Praffen. Each of you will attach his line to a different grip. Then go about your assignments. Wait — fasten these to your suit harness; you’ll float without ballast.” He handed four weights equipped with quick-release clips for harness attachment to the helmsman.

Egress was made in silence through the tiny lock. It was essentially a U-shaped liquid trap, fundamentally similar in operation to the main one and deep enough so that the Kwembly’s tilt did not quite spoil its operation. The fact that the outer end was in liquid anyway may have made the difference. Beetchermarlf, emerging directly into the current, was glad of Stak’s steadying grip as he sought anchorage for his own safety line.

A minute later the third member of their group had joined them, and together they clambered the short distance that separated them from the river bottom. This was composed of the rounded rocks which had been visible from the bridge, arranged in an oddly wavelike pattern whose crests extended across the direction of the current. At first glance, Beetchermarlf got the impression that the cruiser had stranded in the trough between two of these waves. Enough of the outside lights were still working to make seeing possible, if not quite ideal.

The trio made their way around the stern to get a look at their vehicle’s underside. ‘While this was much less well lighted, it was obvious at once that there would be a great deal to report to Dondragmer.

The Kwembly had been supported by a set of sixty trucks, each some three feet wide and twice as long, arranged in five longitudinal rows of twelve. All swiveled on casters and were interconnected by a maze of tiller ropes which were Beetchermarlf’s main responsibility. Each of the trucks had a place to install a power unit, and had its own motor consisting of a six-inch-thick shaft whose micro-structure gave it a direct grip on the rotating magnetic field which was one of the forms in which the fusion units could deliver their energy. If no power box was installed, the truck rolled free. At the time of the accident, ten of the Kwembly’s twenty-five converters had been on trucks, arranged in point-forward V patterns fore and aft.

Eighteen trucks from the rear of the cruiser, including all five of the powered ones at that end, were missing.