Still River

Chapter Nine Of Course I’m Collecting It

Even on Enigma, Molly’s fall wasn’t long enough for her to formulate any more thoughts, or for that matter to come out with any words. The passage feeding the “volcano’s” crater was not vertical; its slope was so small that she struck the bottom in a few seconds, and in a few more was able to bring herself to a halt. Irritated but still in control of her temper, she started to climb back toward the faint light she could still see.

Then something pushed her gently but firmly in the opposite direction, knocking her off her feet again. She guessed that this must be the robot, but with practically no help either from her eyes or her semicircular canals she had trouble making either her feet or her hands steer her in the right direction. She was only partly on her feet when she was bowled over again in slow motion.

This time she bounced gently twice, taking much longer to hit the ground the second time, and realized that the floor had become steeper. She eventually collected enough of her senses to use the hand lamp that was part of her armor’s equipment.

By this time Charley’s frantic voice was clamoring for attention.

“Molly! I can’t see you! There’s sand still flowing into the hole; are you buried? Can you tell if you’re moving? I don’t dare bring the boat down again until I know where you are!”

“I’m not buried, and you needn’t worry about crushing me,” the Human answered as calmly as she could. “I’m down the hole, apparently. I can see no light but my own, I’m sliding and rolling down a bare rock slope, and I seem to be well ahead of the robot. I don’t think I can have come very far, but I don’t at the moment see how I’m going to get back. The boat will certainly never get in here, I can’t re-program the robot to carry me back downwind, and I don’t think I can climb back on my own; there isn’t enough traction. Any ideas?”

“Just to do what you said if you got in trouble—head back for the others at top speed. Do the rest of you know what’s happened?”

“It seems pretty clear,” said Joe. “Carol’s trouble, amplified, I gather. It would seem best to stay near or even on the robot if you can, Molly; at the moment I am still picking up its broadcast, though if this is what happened to the other one we must expect it to get far enough below the surface to lose the telemeter waves eventually.”

“At the moment I can’t see it, and I think I’m going downhill faster than it does.”

“We’ll have to hope that downhill is also upwind. Keep looking for it, and if you do see it, do your best to get hold of it. Charley’s ropes should be extremely useful. Charley, I assume you’re on your way back for us. I’ll check out the receiver I used for finding the other robots, and we’ll try to get back to your neighborhood in time to measure how far from the original entrance you may have traveled. It should be possible to make a long enough rope in the shop to let one of us follow you and help you climb back, regardless of traction and slope. Jenny, will you see about that?”

The Nethneen’s calm efficiency slowed Molly’s heartbeat to something near normal, though no Human tumbling through darkness in near-free fall is ever likely to be completely at ease.

A gradual realization that her fall had ceased helped even more to restore her equanimity. At least, she reflected, there was one good point to Enigma: the worst thing about a fall was not the sudden stop at the end. Both the light and her sense of touch, through her thin gloves, told her that she was on sand once more. The rock must have leveled, or even formed a hollow, where the blowing grains could collect. First things first, however; where was the robot?

She twisted the lamp control to narrow beam and swept it back and forth in the direction from which she thought she must have come, widening the search angle more and more as she saw nothing and grew less and less sure of her own sense of direction. After several tense minutes, there was a gleam of light on metal nearly ninety degrees from where she had thought to find it. She nearly panicked again as it occurred to her that she might have been right and the robot was now passing her to one side, but she retained enough self-control not to leap toward it. Holding the light beam as steadily as she could, she finally decided that the cylinder was coming almost straight toward her and reported the fact to the others, receiving a variety of nonverbal sounds of relief in response.

“You know,” Molly added, “if you folks get back soon enough, it might be worth trying to block that hole completely with the ship. If the wind stops, the robot will also, I suppose, and I won’t get any farther in.”

“But don’t you want to find your ice?” asked Charley innocently. Molly, for once, found herself with no answer ready.

“It may be worth trying.” Joe also ignored the Kantrick’s question. “That won’t start the machine back this way, though.”

“But if it turns out that it’s not too far from the hole, you or Carol could come and fix the controls. You could go on down to the ice with me, or at least look for it for a reasonable time. Would either of you be willing?”

“Of course, it’s planetary structure,” Carol remarked thoughtfully. “I don’t really suppose Joe wants to spend more time than he can help away from his map, but it certainly sounds like fun to me. We’ll see what things look like when we get there.”

“But how…” began the Kantrick.

" ’Scuse me a minute, Charley,” Molly cut in. “Sorry to interrupt, but the robot is getting close and I’m going to have to travel a little to be sure I’m in its path. With no horizon, I’m even less sure of up and down than usual, and walking is awkward. Remember I’m out of control when I’m off the ground, just as everyone but Joe is. Please let me concentrate for a minute.”

“Please keep us informed.”

It was Joe who uttered the words and Charley rather than Molly who was surprised at his doing so after her request. He must have good reason, she assumed, and started talking.

“It’s about fifteen meters away, still traveling at its set pace. I think I’m right in front of it now, and it’s heading right at me. It’s back at its basic height above the ground, Joe; it must have decided it was past the eddy. Here it comes. I’m getting onto its field shaper—no, I think it will be easier to ride right on top. I see you put some tie-downs there, too, Charley, and I’ll use some of this rope—there. You can talk now. I’m safely aboard, and riding with the thing wherever it’s going.”

“Can you see where?” asked Carol. “What sort of place are you in? Is it more of a tunnel or a real cave?”

Molly swept her beam around. “Tunnel fits it better so far, though it’s a very big one—forty or fifty meters high and three times or more that width. I’m fairly close to one side.”

“Is the robot following a straight path?” asked Joe.

“I can’t be sure. It doesn’t leave any track even in the sand, of course, and we’re over plain rock again.”

“Would it be convenient for you to drag a foot and leave an occasional mark, if you do cross any more sand, so that we—I—could get some idea of your actual track? I admit I should set up some larger-scale recording procedures here, but I may not have time to do that before the boat arrives and we have to come for you; and of course I am to blame for not thinking to do it beforehand, anyway.”

“If any of us gets to the end of this operation without bumping our heads on something we’ve left undone, he or she will be very lonely,” replied Molly. “Sure, I’ll make tracks whenever I can, and look back at them for as long as the light allows. At the moment it doesn’t look promising; the floor is getting steeper again, and there doesn’t seem much chance of sand or anything else loose collecting on it. I’ll watch, though. I certainly don’t want to fall asleep.”

“Better tie yourself on, just in case.”

“Thanks, I’ve already done that, Charley. Do I really need to keep talking? There’s nothing new to see or to say for the time being, and so far at least you can keep track of the robot.”

“All right, relax unless you really have something to say,” agreed Joe. “One of us will call you every few minutes to make sure nothing has taken you by surprise; please answer.”

“Of course.”

Nothing visible occurred before the party lifted off on its way back to the Molly-trap, as Carol was calling it, though more and more things were going on in the Human’s mind. She knew she was not traveling rapidly, but the passage never lost at least some downward slope; she was getting farther and farther below the surface. This was good in a way, as it was presumably bringing her closer and closer to the ice that she was still sure must be somewhere below; but as time went on, she began to think more and more often how nice it would be to have company in this vast expanse of darkness. Not just talking company, but touching company. Rovor, her husband, for first choice, or little Buzz, but they were parsecs away; and of course it didn’t have to be Human, Joe or Carol would have been quite acceptable, not merely because they could control the robot.

“We’re well on the way.” It was Carol’s voice this time. “Joe is a little worried.”

“I suppose the signal from the robot is getting lost,” Molly answered.

“I’m afraid so,” said Joe himself. “I am doing everything I can with the sensitivity of the equipment on the boat, and I have already calculated as well as possible how far you are from the place where you fell.”

“What’s your answer?”

“About two kilometers.”

“That’s reasonable, assuming it’s been a fairly straight line—which is something I wouldn’t have guaranteed. Have you any idea of the uncertainty?”

“About the same, I’m afraid.”

“Why? Electromagnetic timing is good to millimeters at planetary ranges.”

“My fault again. I sacrificed resolving power for speed, and wanted only broad measures of the winds. It seemed likely that small local ripples would be more nuisance than help in working out planetary circulation.”

Molly had to admit that he was probably right. “A two-kilo uncertainty still seems pretty big, though.”

“It does to me, as well,” replied the Nethneen, “but inconsistencies in the measurements of the last hour or so force me to admit the figure.”

For the first time, Mary Warrender Chmenici began to feel real worry about her own safety. Two minutes later the anxiety deepened.

“Joe! All of you! There’s nothing around me!” she suddenly cried out.

“You mean your light failed?” asked Charley. The prosaic question steadied her, and she actually checked by turning the beam on the robot under her.

“You would think of something like that. The light seems to be all right, but there is no ground under the robot. It’s supposed to stay only a few centimeters up, Joe!”

“Yes. Look in other directions than what you think is down.”

“I can’t be wrong about that, unless the robot’s guidance system has quit. Upward—I think there is rock, but it’s too far to be sure. What has been ahead all along, nothing. Behind—that’s better. Rock. Only a hundred meters or so away, I think, though I don’t trust my depth perception at that range and there’s nothing to give me scale. I’m going down, slowly.”

“You’ve entered a cavern at a point well above its floor, I’d say. The robot is going straight down, ignoring wind, just as it went straight up for the eddy. Can you guess how long it was after you actually entered this space before you noticed it? Was your light on?”

“It was on, I assure you. I missed the floor right away and yelled within a split second.”

“Good. Let us know when you get to the bottom, and we’ll be able to figure the depth; the descent rate is set.”

For the first time in their acquaintance, Molly felt an urge to tie knots in Joe’s appendages; then she realized that he was probably not really indifferent to her feelings, but deliberately helping her to control them. She forced herself to slacken the death-grip she had taken on two of Charley’s improvised handholds. The robot wouldn’t fall, and if it did, there wasn’t much damage likely to result here, she reminded herself firmly. A cave could hardly be more than a few tens, or perhaps a few hundred, meters deep, without collapsing. Of course, wtih Enigma’s gravity, that figure might have to be refined upward, depending on how the cave might have formed. Lava bubble? Solution space? Carol’s question, really, and the little woman would need data. The question of getting herself back to the surface could be faced later; her armor was good. This was not an emergency, just an unexpected research incident.

So far. She dismissed that codicil from her mind, emphatically.

“All right. Nothing in sight yet below. Joe, this robot must be sensing ground distance. Can’t you tell how far we’re going to—well, fall?”

“Yes, it does, and no, I can’t. I arranged no readout for that information. Given time, I suppose I could do so, but I did not foresee any such need.”

“Carol, you should have ridden him harder; you could have used that sort of information.”

“Next time,” replied the Shervah. “This one just counts as educational experience.” The sarcasm was again evident; Molly felt more and more confidence in her translator’s handling of Carol’s tones. She wished she were more certain of Joe’s.

“Still nothing visible?” Charley’s voice cut into her thoughts. Molly leaned over the edge of the cylinder and directed her light downward.

“Not sure. Very vague brightness; just a moment. It disappears when I turn the light out, so it must be real reflection.”

“Anything horizontal?” asked Carol. “I can’t for the moment imagine what could happen on a planet like this to form a cavern.”

“I couldn’t imagine what could form solid rock, either,” Molly replied. “We both have a touch of revision to do on our ideas. To answer your question, I can’t see anything at my own level in any direction, and the glow below doesn’t seem to be getting brighter with any speed. This place is pretty big.”

“But you can guess what might be light-colored underneath!” remarked Charley.

“As long as we call it a guess, sure. Just let’s not say it until I get there,” replied his Human friend. Molly was learning caution.

“Is the glow uniform, or can you make out features?” asked Carol.

“It’s still hard to be sure, but there seem to be lighter and darker patches when my light beam is fairly wide. When I narrow it down and sweep it around, it’s harder to compare.”

“Keep watching with the wider beam, and let us know when you feel sure the features are increasing in size. That will tell us you’re near the bottom, whatever the bottom is,” Joe pointed out.

“All right. I rather hope there’s no wind down there; I’m starting to feel cramped on this thing. It would be nice to take a walk.”

“There’s good reason to hope the wind will be straight up from whatever you land on, isn’t there?” came Charley’s voice.

“There’s hope. I’m not going to claim good reason.” Molly did not feel like mentioning the word ice for the time being; she was still on the emotional backswing from the jump at a conclusion that had carried her into her present trouble. If Charley wanted to keep his optimism, all right.

There were features below, spreading and growing more distinct as she approached. Nothing really clear yet; just some places a little darker—really darker, or a little deeper?—than others. Her mind came back to full concentration on business, and she reported tersely to the others as the picture clarified.

“It’s not a level bottom. I thought for a minute the dark places must be deeper—farther from the light—but it’s the other way. One of them is higher than I am now…”

“Which way?”

“That way. Please, Charley; what possible direction reference do I have? Even if this cylinder hasn’t turned during descent, and I’m willing to believe it hasn’t, I have, often enough to forget which way I was originally facing. The lighter stuff is coming up now, and I’m going to meet what seems to be a steep slope close to a fairly sharp boundary between light and dark. There. Descent has stopped, Joe. How far down did I go? At least roughly, in kilometers.”

“About six hundred fifty meters.” Still no detectable emotion, but the Nethneen had to be laughing; Molly herself was. “Are you moving at all? Is there still wind?”

“Yes, apparently. I can’t feel it through armor, and I don’t plan to step off as long as this thing is traveling, but it is traveling, so I assume it senses impact pressure.”

“What’s the ground like?” cut in Jenny. “Any visible difference from what we’ve already analyzed?”

Molly swung her light downward and looked carefully for the first time, and a grin spread on her freckled face. “I can’t see the ground, Jen,” she said softly. “It’s covered with feathery, silvery-looking crystals.”

“What?” Carol almost screamed.

“Yes, dear. I…”

“Get some! Are they really dense, like an actual metal, or could they be conducting hydrocarbon—the stuff Jenny mentioned earlier?”

“I can’t tell the density, for several reasons. Even if there were decent gravity, I have no way of telling how loose or open the structure of this fluffy stuff may be; even its inertia won’t tell me anything. It’s bound to be low. Maybe if I’m here long enough I can tell you whether it’s growing or not, but I rather hope to get specimens back to you for that sort of check.”

“What are the temperature and pressure? Not much different from the surface, I’d suppose.”

Molly consulted the environment checkers on her armor. “No significant pressure difference—in this gravity and with this gas mixture that would take several kilometers change in altitude, I’d think. The temperature may be a trace higher; unfortunately I didn’t think to record it to a hundredth of a Kelvin before I started down. It’s a hair over two thirty-five. For practical purposes, you have surface conditions here except for light.”

“And that difference would be in favor of life!” said Carol happily.

“Why?” asked Molly. “Wouldn’t the life need some sort of energy source?”

“Of course, but not something as destructive as Arc’s light—oh, I forgot for a moment. We’ll worry about the energy later, when we have specimens.”

“Good,” said the Human, suddenly remembering her own situation. “Is there any practical way in anyone’s mind for getting me out of here?”

“Oh, I’ll come after you,” said the Shervah enthusiastically. “Jenny has started a rope in the shop; there’s plenty of carbon in the air, so there’s no limit on raw material. In this gravity, we can carry kilometers of cord strong enough to lift both of us, if we have to.”

“And how are you going to find me?”

“Simple. I’ll ride another of Joe’s robots, and set it to go upwind at higher speed than the one you’re riding. Sooner or later I’ll catch you, and I can reset both robots to come back downwind. Actually we shouldn’t need the rope, but I’ll play it safe; that seems the sensible way—we could be taken by surprise by something else, after all.”

“Have you consulted with Joe about taking another of his robots from the mapping project?”

“No, but this is important; and we have to save you, too.

I know your armor should be good for a long time, but as he said awhile ago, the environment is really bad for a Human. You’d freeze to death in seconds if your power failed—or maybe boil; I know you have good insulation and your body produces an incredible amount of heat.”

“The atmosphere study is important, too,” Molly pointed out in some amusement.

“Well, yes, of course. Maybe it would be quicker for Joe to make a new robot in the shop than to go off and pull another from the mapping. How about it, Joe? You must have all the patterns.”

“Yes, I do. I am not quite so sure about raw materials, however; the boat doesn’t carry much in the way of spare metal. If I improvised by making the shell from some carbon polymer, manual replanning would be needed, and that would take awhile. I fear it would be quicker to take another from the mapping job.”

“Joe,” said Molly softly, “I don’t consider myself an emergency case yet. I admit I’d be relieved to be back among you, but getting specimens for Carol and Jenny and me is also part of the job, and this is a part of the planet we’d never have seen—never have suspected, probably—if I hadn’t been so silly about making that jump a little while ago. I haven’t heard of armor failure in my lifetime, and I don’t mind a few days of mild discomfort. If Carol wants to come along and see the place for herself, and collect her own specimens, and that fits into any plan for getting me back, fine; but I don’t see why parts of the project already planned and underway need to suffer.”

“Charley, let me at the keys.” Joe spoke quietly, but for the first time a thrill of real fear—not just the sudden, brief panic that had come with a fall—seized Molly. If Joe were taking over the flying, and especially if he were changing flight path, he was not making a new robot; he was going after one of the others. That meant he considered the situation more serious than she had allowed herself to believe; and Joe’s opinion, for reasons none of the group could have stated clearly, always carried more weight than his negligible physical size warranted. Maybe it was his species; the first Nethneen Molly had met was also the first instructor at the Eta Carinae institution whose ability to get abstractions across to a student was not hampered by translators. She had given the being the translator name of Sklodowska, after one of her own classical heroes, and had been rather careful never to learn whether it was male or female. Molly herself had not, until meeting this being, really expected to learn much from lectures at the School. The incredibly informative combination of verbal symbols with animated and still graphic presentations had given her a completely new realization of what could be done with the art of communication, and left her with a respect for the teacher that, perhaps unjustly, tended to rub off on all Nethneen. If Joe thought she was in danger, then—

Then she needed to keep control of her own feelings. There was nothing any of them could do to get her out of where she was for some time yet. In the meantime, sitting on a metal cylinder and thinking about her own troubles would do no one any good. She, and Jenny, and Carol could all use specimens, so the thing to do right now was collect specimens.

Making sure that she was tied to the robot, she lowered her feet to the field rim at the lower edge. Then she set her light to a diffuse glow and clipped it to her helmet so that it would shine in whatever general direction she was looking, took hold of one of the grips installed by the Kantrick, and reached down with her other hand into the fluffy mass below. It had no strength at all; the crystals disintegrated into sparkling dust at her touch. She made several efforts to get intact samples into a specimen can, but had to settle for the microscopic fragments. She called Carol and described the problem, leaving possible solutions to her and the boat’s resources.

“How deep is this stuff?” asked Jenny. “Can you reach any substrate? Is it the usual sand or rock, or something we haven’t seen yet?”

“Whatever it is is lower than I can reach from here,” replied Molly. “Just a moment while I check this safety line.”

“What do you think you’re doing?” asked Charley.

“Stepping off, of course. How else do I find how deep these crystals are?”

“Lower a rope through them, of course!”

“Using what for a weight to carry it down? I’m less than four kilos here myself. I have two safety lines tied to different eyes on the robot, if that makes you feel easier. I’m letting myself down on one of them. I’m about half my height in the fluff—getting a new hold lower on the rope—down again—I’m not sure I want to go under it completely; I won’t be able to see. A little lower though—there. Yukh!”

“No symbol!” came the response in four voices.

“My feet have touched something. Something sort of between slippery and sticky. The symbol implied distaste, but nothing seems to be doing any damage. I was almost pulled loose from my grip on the rope—don’t worry, it’s tied around me as well. I’m trying to walk along behind the robot holding the line, but my feet sink in and are hard to move. I’m climbing back up—if I can pull them free—there. Loose. I’m back on top of the robot again.”

“What’s on your feet?” Carol almost shrieked.

“It’s hard to tell; it’s all covered with the metallic dust. I wish I could blow it off; brushing doesn’t do much good. There arc big gobs of it on each boot; maybe I can pry enough of the outer part off to see whether the shiny stuff is part of it, or was picked up on the way up.” She paused.

“Well?” Carol had waited for much less than a minute.

“Still far from sure. I can’t completely get rid of the metal, if that’s what it is, but there’s certainly less of it inside the lumps. Have you ever tried to get aluminum powder off something? Anyway, as best I can tell, the rest of the stuff is a brownish—to my eyes, of course—very sticky jelly.”

“Collect it!” cried Carol. “If you have no more cans, dump something you’ve already picked up and collect this!”

“Of course,” replied Molly gently. “Even if it isn’t ice, I’m collecting it. Are you ready to come and get it—and me?”