Still River

Chapter Fifteen Of Course Carol’s Right

“Joe!” Neither of the women even knew who had called out first, and neither was greatly calmed by the Nethneen’s placid response. “Yes?”

“Are you still getting any sort of position on us?”

“Yes. As you approached the surface once more, readings got clearer. I still can’t trust them very well, though; the effect of the rock on direction and intensity…”

“But surely we’re not too far from where we were!” It was Molly who asked.

“Not as far as I can tell. Will you clarify what has happened down there?”

The Human did so, summarizing events tersely.

“Any explanation?” asked Jenny at the end. “It’s hard to believe anything has been moving the rope around, and a lot harder to suppose a new cave wall has formed.”

“One.” Molly spoke, after glancing at her companion. “The rope broke or was broken somewhere above and fell into the pool. For some time we’ve been dragging the bight and have now completely crossed the cavern.”

“Wouldn’t you have noticed that the line was slanting to your rear—that you were holding a bight—as you traveled?”

“I did. I assumed it was due to our speed. We were in too much of a hurry, I guess,” replied Molly. “Carol wouldn’t have noticed anything after we found that grass.”

There were several seconds of thoughtful silence.

“That seems to fit what we know of the facts,” Joe admitted finally. “The problem would now seem to be finding your entry tunnel without the aid of either the rope or Carol’s memory. There could be a good many such passages, of course; it’s looking more and more as though you had quite a labyrinth down there. If Charley’s suggestion about kames is right, Enigma’s crust could be riddled with those caves; and if they’re connected enough for air currents to travel freely, there’s a real problem.”

“We’ll have the wind,” Carol pointed out. “We’d have the sound of the storm, but that seems to have died out pretty well. I take it it’s ended up there.”

“No, sand and dust are still blowing strongly. Visibility is very poor. When you get back to the surface, you’ll have to be careful not to blow away as I did. All right, you’d better send the robots upward at one meter per second for six hundred fifty seconds—that will bring you to the level of the original entry tunnel…”

“Maybe. We don’t know that the lake surface is at the level of Molly’s first stop down here.”

“Of course. Well, you’ll still be somewhere near it, I’d think.”

“Could be. But there’s another point. I don’t like the idea of moving from one robot to the other to reset their controls with a drop like that underneath. I might conceivably live through such a fall in this gravity, especially with a splash instead of a smash at the bottom, but if I did lose my hold while transferring, Molly and I would both be in trouble. I hate to suggest leaving one of the machines here even for a little while, but it’s going to be a lot more practical for us to ride just one of them up.”

“You have plenty of rope,” Charley cut in testily. “Why should you be worried about falling? You could tie a safety line to each machine and another one to Molly, so you wouldn’t even have to climb up by yourself if you did fall.”

“And if I set up even a small difference in the flight courses of the robots, I could be breaking the ropes or pulling myself apart with no chance to correct it. Joe’s machines are too independent of outside influence. No, thanks, Charley.”

Molly wondered fleetingly how much of this objection represented a serious worry of Carol’s and how much was reluctance to be corrected by the Kantrick. Even Joe hesitated before agreeing, but he did agree. Moments later, Molly had moved over to the Shervah’s robot and was lashing herself to it while her little friend worked the inside keys. Before the knots were finished, they were rising. At Carol’s suggestion, the Human kept playing her light on the nearby wall, and the smaller woman kept them keyed out of contact with it.

At what should have been about the right height, Carol stopped their ascent. The “wall” was not yet quite a ceiling, but had developed enough overhang to permit argument on the point. Distractingly, it was now covered with patches of something that reminded Molly of moss. The Shervah sent them drifting away from it reluctantly, until the rock was scarcely visible in their lights, and reset the machine to move downwind.

In the boat, Joe was hurrying as much as he dared on the final details of the mapping robot. Actual construction was no problem with the shop resources available, but even he was being corrupted by the notion that no possible emergency should be left unconsidered. He did not, as it happened, think of the facility as being particularly complete; it was the sort of thing one had in an auxiliary spacecraft. In a typical mechanical laboratory on any of the School planets he could have built a copy of the boat itself, complete with shop, with a few minutes of control adjustment and an hour’s waiting. He would have been disappointed in an adolescent of his own or any other supposedly intelligent species who couldn’t. He would, of course, have been a little quicker and less clumsy without the environment armor, thin as this was; but being Joe, he gave no thought to the negative aspects of the situation.

He kept adding equipment as thoughts occurred to him. He was genuinely concerned by now about the danger to the two explorers, and had put his own wind-mapping project well into the back of his mind.

This was unfortunate, as Molly was to point out later, though the data probably could not have been interpreted until later anyway.

Charley, without consulting anyone, had grounded the boat as nearly as he could manage to the point where Carol had attached her safety rope, but could see no sign of it through the blowing sand. He did not seriously consider emerging to make a personal search, but remained at the keys, straining his memory for any sort of handling equipment on board that might substitute for him to find the line and be sent along it to the point where the break had presumably occurred. A light left there, or even carried farther along the passage if there were no ambiguity about the path, might help the women identify the right tunnel.

Jenny, also without consulting anyone, had made another half kilometer of safety cord and was checking her armor with the intention of doing personally what Charley wanted to do by mechanical proxy. With her build, wind wouldn’t get too much grip on her, she kept telling herself; and as long as she was firmly attached to the ship itself she couldn’t blow too far even if it did. Unlike Joe, she came from a world where the concept of wind was very real to its people, and she was realistically scared; but if her friends were out of the physical touch Carol had so sensibly planned, something would have to be done. If anyone could climb that hill, it would be a Rimmore—maybe it would have to be from the upwind side, but she’d make it. Jenny checked her armor and made sure she had an extra light.

Charley knew, of course, when the air lock opened—he was preoccupied but still watching his instrument banks. His screen coverage did not include the lock area, and he wondered for a moment whether Joe had finished the mapping robot and were testing it without reporting to anyone. This seemed very unlike the Nethneen, but before Charley could decide on the propriety of interrupting work with a question, Jenny flowed into the field of one of his instruments. She was barely visible, half buried in sand, her numerous legs almost entirely out of sight as they worked her long body forward.

For just a moment her fellow student wondered about her sanity; then he caught a glimpse of the rope extending back toward the ship, bowed by the wind, and was quick enough on the uptake to grasp the whole plan before bursting into speech. When he did say anything, it was calm advice.

“If you’re just heading for Molly’s hill, Jenny, about five grads to your left would be better. If you’re hoping to intercept Carol’s rope before you get there, I’m not so sure, but would guess about as much to your right.”

“I was thinking mainly of the hill” was the reply.

“The rope would help you climb it,” pointed out the Kantrick.

Jenny had little of Carol’s impatience and superiority where Charley was concerned. “Thanks; I hadn’t thought of that. I suppose the real question is whether I’m likely to lose more time hunting for the rope in this sandstorm than I’ll save by finding it. I’ll try your shift to the right; the hill is big enough so that won’t slow me down much in getting to it.”

“Jenny, are you really outside?”

“Yes, Joe. I am not blowing away, though in this disgusting gravity I feel as though I ought to, but I have a rope connecting me to the boat if I do.”

“Please come back! The robot is almost finished, and it will carry riders. You can take it on the track of the others much more safely.”

“It isn’t tested yet. You’d better combine a test run with backing me up. You consider time important now, or you wouldn’t have dropped everything else to make that machine. If I come back and wait for you to finish it, we’ll lose more time.”

“True, of course. Very well. You or Charley please keep me informed of your progress. I’ll be outside in, at a guess, a quarter of an hour.” And in the shop, unseen by the others, handling tendrils moved even more rapidly.

“I’ve reached the base of the slope,” Jenny reported a minute or so later. “I haven’t seen or touched Carol’s rope, and I’m not going to waste time looking for it. The sand is about at its angle of repose—I can’t seem to climb it any better than Carol or Molly could—but I’m going around to the windward side. At least it won’t be blowing down in my face there. The slope should be gentler, too, and the wind itself will help me up—no, wait—here’s Carol’s rope—I can haul myself up by that. Can you still see me, Charley?” “Yes. Not clearly.”

“You tell Joe how I’m doing, then—and me as well. I get less wind trouble if I stay mostly buried, and that keeps me from seeing very far. Let me know when I’m near the top.”

“All right. Don’t bury yourself entirely.”

During the next few minutes, only Charley’s terse remarks connected the group. “You’re about halfway.” “You’re digging in too deeply—I can hardly see you.” “Are you following the rope? You seem to be working around to the other side of the hill.” “You’re getting buried again.”

“I can’t help it,” Jenny replied to the last comment. “I’m not digging in; the hill is traveling like a dune, I think. The wind is trying to move it on top of me.”

“Are you sure?” cut in Joe.

“Not sure, but it’s the impression I get. Why?”

“Never mind.” The Nethneen fell silent again.

“I hadn’t noticed that the hill seemed any closer,” said Charley thoughtfully, “but that would explain why the rope seems to be leading you around to the other side.”

“So it—Oh! I get it! Joe! Nearly done?”

“Nearly. Get to the top as quickly as you can and report what, if anything, is left of the crater. Stay there as long as you can. Charley, get distance measures of her as exactly as possible at regular intervals after she gets to the top; we may want to know how fast that hill is traveling. Jenny, just do your best to stay on the crater rim, if there still is one, until I get to you. Carol? Molly?”

“Yes.” It was the Human’s voice.

“I take it you have not found your entry tunnel and that there is no wind to guide you.”

“Plenty of wind. It led us to the wrong tunnel, which was blocked with vegetation—to classify hastily—before we got far anyway. We’ve gone back to the big cave and are checking its walls at this height for the right opening.”

“How did you know it was the wrong tunnel?”

“We were pretty sure from the beginning because it was a lot lower than we thought it should be.” It was Carol’s voice this time. “Then it became a narrow, twisty tube of rock that finally got too narrow for the robot.”

“Why didn’t you tell us?” asked Charley.

“What could you have done about it? As long as we could get back to the big cave, there was nothing to worry about. It cost us only a few minutes, anyway. But, Joe—is there any point in trying to find the original tunnel now?”

“Possibly not, but what happened to your rope may still be useful data, and your memory will give us information on how much of the way is blocked.”

“What are you talking about?” asked Charley.

“Their guiding wind has stopped. Your hill is a moving dune. They don’t hear the storm any more. Jenny, are you at the top yet?”

“Nearly, I think. Charley, can you see me?”

“Yes, barely. Ten meters or so will bring you to the lip, as far as I can tell. I see what you mean now, Joe. But look—if they have a different wind, there must be other openings to the surface, even though this one may be blocked; and maybe we could dig through this sand…”

“That’s why I want to have Carol check the inside and Jenny the out. It’s too bad Jenny never saw the crater as it was before, but—wait; you did, Charley. Lift the boat and get a look into that hole yourself. Stay close to Jenny—you don’t want to pick her up by her safety line. You can let down and collect her when you’ve checked the crater, unless it looks as though digging were going to be quick and easy and she wants to start in at it.”

“I doubt that it will be” came the Rimmore’s rasp. “The hole I can see now is less than half as deep as the hill looks high from outside. That’s not what I remember the rest of you saying. I have no digging tools, anyway.”

“Any luck from inside, Molly and Carol?” asked the Nethneen.

“Four holes that might be tunnel openings so far, all of them different in detail from the one we came through, none of them with any air currents, and each with different kinds of stuff growing in it” was the Shervah’s answer. “We’ll keep looking, but more for wind than for similarity. I’m beginning to guess what happened to the rope. Are you up where you can see the crater yet, Charley?”

“Just a moment. Yes. I was a little too high; this wind is increasing, or at least the visibility is getting worse. The hole is half full. Stay where you are, Jenny; I’ll bring the boat down where you can reach it. You still have your own safety line, don’t you?”

“Of course. It’s fastened at the main personnel lock. Turn a quarter left—now straight down—ten meters to the right and about three aft—another two to the right—there. I have the lock open—I’m inside—outer door is closed, and I’m flushing the local air. You can do what seems good with the boat. Is the new machine ready, Joe?”

“Yes, but I’m not quite sure what we do with it now. Carol and Molly are blocked from us. We have no high-powered excavation equipment other than ordinary explosives, which it would be unsafe to use—for all we know of the local structure, we might bring the caverns down on them. We…”

“Pardon me, Joe” came Molly’s voice. “I think there is a pretty clear line of action. Since there are winds down here—we’ve found another, much fainter current and are following it—there must be other connections with the surface. I think you’d better get back to your air-current maps, maybe concentrating on the local area more than you would have done, and see how many passages you can find with winds blowing out and with winds blowing in. At the moment, Carol and I really have no basis for a guess on whether we should go upwind or down. Back to your wind maps, little friend!”

“Which were you doing with that current that led you into a narrow passage?” asked Charley.

“Downwind. The only evidence we had at the time was that we’d come in against the wind.”

“When its path got too narrow, did you backtrack?”

“Obviously.” Carol’s voice was a trifle impatient again.

“I mean past the point where you first found the current? I got the impression you went looking right away for other winds.”

“Oh. Yes, that’s right. We don’t know where that one came from.”

“Then you have at least one more lead if the one you’re using now proves useless.”

“I suppose we do. I suspect we have several hundred. What we really need is for Joe to find an incurrent passage and flood it with something nice and smelly that we could follow to its source.”

“You’re not going to take your helmets off to smell the air.”

“I’m afraid not,” agreed Molly before Carol could counter. “Even if I risked an occasional sniff, I don’t suppose I could catch anything but ammonia—which probably doesn’t have any odor to the rest of you.”

“Actually, the idea has some merit,” Carol pointed out. “The robots can do a certain amount of gas analysis, can’t they, Joe? We might keep it in mind, if the right conditions arise. Anyway, I second Molly’s motion. Back to your maps.”

“I have a further suggestion,” said Jenny. “In addition to the normal mapping, two of us could search the area for caves leading underground. Charley could use the boat and I the new mapping robot Joe has just finished. With this storm, vision won’t be much help right around here, but we could head upwind to its edge and cover the topography in detail as it moves, following it back in this direction. We can map any promising places, and even if they seem too far from you to be very helpful yet, just getting an idea of their number and distribution should be of use.”

“Joe!” Carol snapped suddenly. “The robot just stopped!”

“What was guiding it? Did you see or hear anything change?”

“We were following another air current, as I said…” “Up- or downwind?”

“Down. It must have stopped. There’s roaring ahead—I’m not sure what’s happening…”

“The storm? You weren’t hearing that before. Maybe you’ve gotten close enough to an opening to outside…”

“It wouldn’t have been that sudden, Charley. Molly, can you see anything ahead? Use any kind of light you want—I’ll cover my eyes with the regular flare lids.”

“Nothing. The passage just goes on. But the racket is getting louder—back the way we came, Carrie! As fast as we can travel! It may not be falling rock, but I can’t think of anything else that might sound anything like it. Move this thing!”

“You mean the tunnel is collapsing?” cried Jenny.

“I don’t know. Not close enough to here for us to see, but that would explain the wind’s stopping. Get back to the big cavern, at least, Carol, and do some more checking on its wind patterns—let’s see whether the ones we found earlier still exist. If the structure of this labyrinth is changing much ...” Molly left the sentence unfinished, and none of the others tried to complete it. There were several minutes of silence. The people in the boat could think of nothing useful to do, and even Charley was afraid of distracting the fleeing couple with a badly timed question. The boat, indifferent to the wind, hovered above the rapidly filling crater where the women had vanished. Its occupants could only listen to their translators.

“Back in the big place.” Carol’s voice came at last.

“Can you still hear the falling rock, if that’s what it was?”

“No, Joe; that faded out within a few seconds. Whether we got away from it or it just stopped I don’t plan to find out. I can’t hear it, or the storm, or anything but your voices. You, Molly?”

The Human shook her head negatively, then remembered that only Carol could see her. “Nothing.”

“What next? Search this level for more tunnels?”

“I don’t think so. I say back down to the lake, or whatever it should be called, and find that passage we went along earlier. It had a wind, remember—so did the one you started into. Let’s see whether those are still blowing. I’m beginning to think we’d be best off going upwind looking for places where air currents go underground.”

“Why?”

“Well…”

“Going upwind is most likely to find your ice, isn’t it, Molly?” Jenny’s voice carried amusement.

“I hadn’t thought about ice for a couple of hours at least,” the Human replied, not even blushing. “It would be interesting to find it but wouldn’t get us out of here. Right now I’m beginning to doubt that there is any.”

“What?” This was Charley, of course. “You know the density of this planet as well as I do and have seen even more of the rock it’s made of. It can’t be all silicate—there must be hydrides.”

“That’s the logic,” Molly agreed.

“Well, where’s the hole in it? Don’t you believe it any more?”

“There’s a healthy doubt growing. This place could be a sponge rather than an iceberg. In any case, with no ice vaporizing, air would have to be blowing in to match what blows out, and we should have as good a chance going upwind as down—especially since two downwind searches have failed us now.”

“Three, if you count the hunt for the original entry,” pointed out Carol.

“All right, three.”

“But going upstream, a river tends to subdivide into smaller and smaller streams,” Charley pointed out. “Downstream it gets bigger. I’d think…”

“This isn’t a river, which cuts its own path,” Carol interrupted. “We don’t know what made this labyrinth, and so far we’ve observed only one of its surface connections. Frankly, I’d rather be moving. There was a river in the other tunnel, and maybe it will give some guidance. The only other thing we have is wind; the only choices we have are with or against, and I’m with Molly for the moment—let’s try against, as fast as the machine will take us.”

“How about recovering the other robot?” Carol thought for a moment.

“If you can put up with its loss, Joe, I think I’d rather not commit myself to an endless running back and forth keeping the two together, even if we are near the ground most or all of the time. If a sudden drop takes us by surprise, the way it did Molly awhile ago, it might be hard to get back together. I think it would be best if we rode the same machine, however uncomfortable.”

“If you think that’s safest, do it that way. We can replace robots. Go ahead as you suggest. We’ll follow, as nearly overhead as we can, in the boat as long as there is any contact with the one you’re riding.” The women agreed briefly, and Carol sent their mount downward more rapidly than she had risked up to this point.

Molly kept her light beamed below and gave warning as the liquid surface approached. They were out of sight of the cavern wall, and not even the Shervah was precisely sure of direction, but she sent the cylinder quickly in what she hoped was more or less the right one.

It took two or three minutes to reach the edge of the lake, grown thicker with the grass here; Molly wondered whether time or location had made the difference. The arrival brought no relief.

“Joe! Charley! The level is higher! There’s no place along the edge to travel now. It’s right against the cave wall and partway up—I can’t tell how far.”

“About three meters since we were last here. The passages we used—yours and mine both—are off to the right,” Carol interjected.

“How far?”

“Yours, about seven hundred meters. We’d better hurry.” “Why?”

“Do you want to ride, swim, or get washed down that passage?”

“I’m not sure I want to go along it at all now.” “You’d rather wait until this place fills with ammonia?” “It couldn’t!”

“I’d like to believe that, too. Where’s the stuff coming from? How big is the source? Maybe it’s going to keep raining into the lakes in this neighborhood for the next twenty years. Maybe one of the lakes up above is draining into these caves.”

“But…”

“Come.” Carol said only the one word, and Molly regained her self-control. Of course her little friend was right.

Unless the ammonia turned out to be coming in from below ...

Carol sent the robot on.