Still River

Chapter Nineteen Of Course I Waited For You

Molly was uncomfortable. It was dark. She had not seen or talked to Rovor or Buzz for weeks, and she was lonely, fond as she was of Carol. She had eaten nothing but recycled synthetics for more days than she cared to count. She felt grimy and itchy, and knew that the latter sensation was not entirely subjective; she had not been out of her armor for a long, long time.

But she was happier than she had been for a while. The feeling that her own carelessness had interfered with everyone’s work, including her own, had gone; now there were useful, planned tasks for everyone that would not have existed without her mistake.

Joe’s air-circulation project had been expanded to include underground currents; it was now evident that these were a significant part of Enigma’s wind pattern. Joe was grateful for the discovery, and—surprisingly—visibly eager to set about the new work. Jenny and Carol were practically wallowing in the wealth of biological and biochemical information flooding in, or would be once they could collect and study it properly. Molly herself was still unsure about her ice hypothesis, since the likelihood of a spongy interior for Enigma was now pretty strong, but mineral analysis and dating as she had originally planned them were still very appropriate. She and Charley also had their activity lines clear, therefore.

The fact that she and Carol were still physically out of touch with the surface somehow was only an inconvenience now, rather than the major worry it had been. Inconveniences could be faced; they ended after a while. The whole School experience was an inconvenience of sorts; living in a dome on airless Pearl, with the endless, nagging fear that her child would make some mistake which his frequently nonhuman caretakers would fail to recognize in time and which could easily kill him was bad even for a stable, healthy Human. Though it had been generations since one of her species had been born or raised on Earth, most of them lived on colony worlds where one could at least stand the local environment for a few days rather than a few seconds. The School was worth it for her and Rovor; the present experience was probably going to be worth it for her; the upbringing would, beyond much doubt, be very good for little Buzz—in her saner moments Molly knew that he was not really in any great danger even when she and his father were parsecs away; but she was a normal parent, and the anxiety was there. She was glad—now that the immediate danger seemed to be moving toward resolution—she could relax a little.

Molly knew that this change in attitude had to be subjective, but she welcomed it anyway. Joe, now on his way to the winter pole with a third mapping robot to check on caves with inblowing winds, would expand the inside charting of the planet. The simple mathematical fact that the complete job should still take half a million years or so seemed less impressive than when the Kantrick had called attention to its magnitude. Somehow, Joe’s being directly involved seemed to make things different. Her own rescue and Carol’s, she now felt, would fit automatically into the new scheme of activities. Like the Shervah, she found herself paying nearly total attention to the research immediately before them.

With one exception. The robot was still powered down, and the hours of life remaining in their armor’s batteries were growing steadily fewer. Carol, exploring on foot for new organisms, had found a small tunnel from which a relatively warm wind seemed to be coming. She had been impressed enough by their situation to help drag the metal cylinder to its mouth, and even spent some time debating with the others the advisability of following this passage when—she did not say if—they resumed powered travel; but she seemed still unworried as ever.

Jenny had found a small river and was following it downward, occasionally supplying the encouraging report that it seemed to be getting larger. Charley was methodically, and for him, silently, expanding his diagram of Enigma’s interior downward and southward. At the moment the two were out of electromagnetic touch, and their mapping computers were working independently, but every few hours they found themselves close enough together so the machines could update each other’s records. There were a number a points of overlap and connection; while it would have taken some hours of backtracking at the moment, either could have rejoined the other without going all the way back to the surface.

The Nethneen’s voice broke a long silence. “You will be pleased to hear that 1 have so far located six caves of varying size. Four of them show no evidence of connection with any larger system, but two have strong inward flow of air.”

“Then the ice theory is out,” Molly replied promptly.

“It becomes very much less probable” was the cautious answer.

“Leaving biology as the surviving contender.” Jenny made no attempt to conceal her satisfaction.

“If you mean the idea that life forms are responsible for reversing the gas-to-solid reaction and returning ammonia and carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, there is a very serious flaw.” If Joe felt any pleasure at pointing this out, the fact was no more obvious than usual.

“What’s that?” asked Jenny.

“The reaction would have to take place underground, judging from the direction of gas flow. Where would your life forms get their energy? The overall process is endothermic, obviously. If it is going on, you people should be much closer to the site than I am. What are your local creatures doing?”

“I ... don’t know,” Jenny admitted. “I’ve found a lot of plantlike stuff along my route, but haven’t collected any of it because it seemed to me that the search for Carol and Molly had to come first. If I had picked anything up, I don’t suppose I’d be able to tell what it was doing chemically without getting it back to the lab.”

“You could do that,” Carol pointed out. “Charley could follow the river you have there and make use of whatever chance it offers of getting to us.”

“You wouldn’t mind? And you, Molly?”

“Of course we wouldn’t.” Molly was partly delighted and partly resentful at not getting the chance to do her own answering. On the whole, she decided, it was better to be delighted; she wasn’t sure just what she would have said.

Carol went on. “Pick up some specimens and get back to the tent. Joe’s point is a very good one, and we need the answer. If life forms are breaking carbamates into gas down here, there’s a local source of energy, and we need to know about it.”

“You mean we could use that life instead of the robot’s fuser?” asked Molly innocently.

“No, of course not. I meant—oh, you were joking, weren’t you?”

“Not entirely. I admit, though, that whether Charley is looking for us alone or Jenny is helping him won’t make any difference if we don’t charge our armor pretty soon. Honestly, Carrie, what do you think the chances are of the robot’s drying out?”

“I haven’t thought much about it; there’s been too much else to do. There can’t be very much ammonia left inside. We tipped it and managed to get some liquid to pour out, so things can be only damp in there. I shouldn’t think the air where we left it could be very close to saturation, so it ought to be drying and oughtn’t to take very long.”

“But it’s been a lot of hours. If it’s a lot more, and Charley doesn’t get here with more energy for our suits, you’ll never be with your Others and I won’t see Rovor and Buzz again. It’s as simple as that.”

But Carol was emotionally incapable of taking the situation that seriously. Practically none of her species could have. Fond as Molly was of the little elf, she was certainly irritating company at times.

But so, of course, was Buzz—and, she had to admit to herself, even Rovor on occasion; and Carol had, after all, done everything that either of them had been able to think of that might lengthen their lives. It was just that she wouldn’t worry. Which, Molly told herself firmly, was good.

Presumably. Probably. Obviously. The way to be.

But worrying wasn’t quite the same thing as trying to think of other constructive lines of action. Maybe there were other tunnels, with dryer currents of air, or warmer ones—why was this one so much warmer, anyway? And since it was warmer, why wasn’t it more effective in evaporating ammonia from the robot? The machine itself shouldn’t be hard to heat up, and ammonia’s temperature of vaporization wasn’t great—not by the standards of anyone made of water. Naturally, Joe hadn’t put packets of silica gel inside the machine—even if silica gel absorbed ammonia the way it did water, which seemed doubtful on what Molly remembered of the chemical structures involved. He hadn’t put in the ammonia drinkers’ equivalent of a dessicator, anyway. He hadn’t expected the robots to get wet. Not inside, that is—he’d protected them against rain, he’d said.

Enigma seemed water-free, so far; would any of the salts lying around serve as driers for ammonia? Non sequitur—but this wasn’t sequential thinking; it wasn’t much better than worrying. They had a lot of collected material, between them, that might be tried out—but that would be an act of desperation; what chance would any one of a dozen or two naturally occurring salts have of being just the substance they needed at the moment?

Maybe an act of desperation was in order, of course, but Molly shrank from the idea of anything that might resemble panic. She cared what others thought of her, and cared about her own self-respect. If she were to put anything inside the robot with the intent of speeding up the drying process, it was going to be something with a good, solid reason for her to believe had the power to absorb ammonia vapor.

She drew a sharp breath, which Carol failed to hear because her translator made no attempt to handle it. The Human was startled, however, to hear Joe’s voice.

“Molly! Is something wrong?” “No. Why do you ask?”

“You said something I gathered to mean surprise.”

“You’ve been doing some fancy work on your translator, haven’t you? Well, I don’t mind, as long as it’s you and we stay on private. I just had another idea about drying this robot.”

There was a brief silence before the Nethneen responded. “Do you really think you should use any more of your water?”

“How long have you been waiting for me to think of that?”

“I haven’t been. Your last sentence set me wondering what your idea could be, and that was all I could think of.”

“Well, you’re probably right. Yes, I see no reason not to use the water. My metabolism produces a constantly increasing amount of it anyway, if I can find anything at all for the food synthesizer to work on—anything with carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, and such essentials, of course; it doesn’t transmute. In any case, I have a fair amount of excess water, and if we don’t get this unit going soon I won’t need it anyway.”

“Would Carol’s nitrosyl chloride surplus be equally effective?”

“I don’t know enough detailed chemistry to guess, and I wouldn’t ask her anyway; she’s too small, and an equivalent amount would be too much of her reserves. We’ll use water.” Molly switched back to the general channel by ceasing to whisper. “Carrie, I’ve thought of something else we can try to get the ammonia out of this machine. It bonds very tightly to water. If we seal it up with a liter or so of ice inside, any liquid that vaporizes should be taken care of fairly quickly.”

“You can furnish that much water?”

“Yes. If we don’t try, I won’t need the water anyway.” She couldn’t make herself omit that point, though she knew it couldn’t reach her companion’s feelings. “Do you have any collecting cans I can use? Mine were full before you caught up with me.” Molly was already opening the appropriate part of her armor.

The Shervah hesitated. “Mine are full, too. All with these life forms, unless that stuff I slipped on was something else. Yours have mostly just mineral samples, don’t they?”

Molly was detached enough to be genuinely amused rather than indignant. “Yes, most of mine can be replaced easily enough. I’ll dump one and use it for the water.” She felt a slight temptation to use the can containing the metallic dust from the upper cave, but was not that childish. Besides, she wanted to know what it was herself, and as far as either of them knew it was not replaceable.

Carol watched with interest while the can was nearly filled with liquid. Molly waited a few minutes, until ice needles began to show across its surface, before placing it inside the robot. “There’s no need to complicate matters with water vapor—or more of it than we can help. Even ice sublimes, but at this pressure it should be a slow process. Also, when this works and the robot starts up, it would be too bad if any motion spilled liquid water into its plumbing; we’d never get rid of that.”

“The two together may be liquid at this temperature,” Carol pointed out uneasily, “but the machine is standing upright; all it should do is lift to normal float height when its power goes back on. It shouldn’t tilt.”

“Better get yourselves on it, though, once the ice is inside and the port closed,” Joe put in. “Power might come on when it was merely safe from the machine’s standpoint, but with unknown and unpredictable commands sneaked in from the circuits shorted by the electrolyte. At the very least, Carol should be ready to open the access port and cut off main power manually the moment it shows signs of misbehavior.”

“Good point.” The elf crouched on the field ring, holding on by one of the ropes, her other hand at the port she had just closed, and the two women waited.

“I have found another cave with inflowing wind” came the Nethneen’s voice. Molly acknowledged briefly but kept most of her attention on the robot and her companion. Charley and Jenny were equally terse, and long minutes of silence ensued.

“I’m back at the surface, heading for the tent.” Jenny’s rasp startled the Human. Carol was less visibly affected but did respond.

“I thought you were back there long ago, analyzing for high energy compounds.”

“Charley and I were both quite a long way down, and I had to do a little collecting. Even knowing the way back up, or having our computers know it, didn’t mean the journey could be a fast one; and what did you expect? I started up only a third of an hour ago.”

“It seems a lot longer,” Molly interjected. “Just waiting for something to happen, especially when you’re not quite sure it will…”

“Of course it will. But you should be working!” Carol seemed almost indignant rather than reproving. “I’m the one who has to stand by this thing! If you can’t get properly interested in the biology, check the rock structure, the passage topology, what you can tell of the wind currents—anything to get your time sense back to normal. Come on, Big Lady, make yourself useful to yourself!”

“I can’t do much topology; if I get out of sight of you and the robot I’m likely to get lost. I don’t have your memory, remember. I need lab facilities to get any further with the rock studies just as much as Jenny does for the life forms—and as you do, I should think.”

“I can classify, on the basis of obvious structure.”

“Only because you can remember the details so well.”

“Jenny.” It was Joe’s voice, making one of his rare interruptions.

“Yes, Joe?” came the rough-voiced response.

“I should have checked with you earlier. You will be back at the boat and tent soon. I was taking for granted that you will be using laboratory facilities; is that correct?”

“That was my plan. Is there something else you want done first?”

“No. I was afraid an apology might be in order. If you happen to need the shop for anything, I’m afraid I have just about monopolized its facilities for a time. I have left things on automatic control, of course, and if necessary you may interrupt for work of your own; but if my additional material can be completed as quickly as possible, it may help.”

“As far as I can see at the moment, I’ll need nothing not already in my lab. If things turn out otherwise, I will call you before making anything, if the interruption will be allowable.”

“Quite. There is nothing going on requiring my full attention here. That applies to the rest of you, as well—if anyone has been refraining from a call simply from courtesy, that is not necessary for a while. If I do get involved in really detailed work, I will report the fact to you all.” He shifted to Human-private channel. “Molly, that was meant especially for you. I have suspected that you wanted to talk about one thing or another several times since you were trapped underground, and were afraid of interrupting my thoughts. You have been very careful about a courtesy code that I gather is quite exaggerated by your standards; I appreciate it. I assure you that, for the time being, it may be ignored.”

“Thanks, Joe. It sometimes has been hard to bottle the words up. There’s really nothing much to say right now, though; all we can do is wait on this piece of drying laundry.”

She was not sure whether Joe’s translator would handle that rather strained figure of speech; after the recent display of its powers she wanted to find out. Joe, however, made no direct answer, and she was left to wonder whether he had picked up enough knowledge of Humanity to grasp it unaided, or the equipment had done it for him, or he felt it would be discourteous to make a direct inquiry about her meaning. There was a lot she still didn’t understand about the Nethneen, much as she liked and respected him.

“I can’t repeat Carol’s assurance that things will be all right” was all he said. “Neither of us can foresee with any certainty in that much detail. We are working, however.”

Actually, it was Charley who took advantage of the permission to interrupt.

“What do you have growing in the shop, Joe?”

Even Molly was embarrassed; that was not merely interruption, it was downright snooping. If Joe had wanted them to know, he would have told—or, come to think of it, why hadn’t he made the call to Jenny on their private channel? He must have wanted to arouse curiosity—

Her thoughts got only that far before the Nethneen answered.

“It is more mapping equipment, whose possible utility occurred to me while I was finishing this machine I am now using. It didn’t take long to set up—it used units already designed for machines we have already put in service, with a minimum of modification to get them into a single device. I may want to put it to work quite soon, or possibly not for several hours. I hope it will be the latter.”

Molly knew she was reading, probably too much, between Joe’s lines, but his speech somehow comforted her. The little fellow did have a tendency to tend very strictly to business, but he was much more likely than Carol to include little problems like lost explorers in the list of current business. His saying as much, and as little, as he had in answer to Charley’s query almost guaranteed that there was something he hoped not to discuss at all, but wanted Molly to know about ...

Or was that just building on sand—or water?

“Molly!” a whisper from Carol caught the Human’s attention as a shout never would have. “Molly! Look!”

She couldn’t have looked anywhere but at the robot. For the first time in hours, it stirred without their pushing or lifting. Soundlessly, and very slowly, it straightened to a true vertical, so that only one side of its base touched the rock. It began to lift, and Carol tensed, ready to snap the access port open and shut it down if it seemed about to do more than rise to—

“Gravdh!!” the Shervah tore the little doorway open and reached in. Molly felt faint for a moment.

“Carrie! What’s wrong?”

“We had it set for the long fall—to slow and stop a safe distance from the bottom. Even if everything is all right, the first thing it’ll try to do is lift a couple of meters, and there isn’t that much room overhead—there! You watch it, too! I think it’s all clear, but I don’t know.”

“Better shut the door again. If there’s still any ammonia, we want to get rid of it, and if there’s anything we know it’s that this outside air is pretty well saturated.”

Carol hesitated; if anything were still wrong, delay in getting to the keys could be serious. Then she followed Molly’s advice. Both watched, tensely at first, then gradually relaxing as the cylinder floated obediently a few centimeters above the rock.

“How much more time should we give it before we take out the can?” asked Carol. “We certainly don’t want to move it around with that liable to spill. We’d be worse off than before.”

“We worry about that later,” replied the Human. “First things to the head of the line. Get up there and plug in your charging cable. I’ll lift you if you’re worried about jolting the cylinder.”

“It won’t be bothered by me.” The small humanoid vaulted to the top of the robot, undipped the appropriate plug from her armor, and established connection with the fuser. Five minutes later—the unit could have produced all the energy their accumulators could hold in as many seconds, but conducting it was another matter—Molly took her place, and a few minutes after that her sigh of relief reached Joe’s translator.

“I take it your immediate danger is over, Molly and Carol.”

“Yes. Now I can start thinking about a bath and a good meal again.”

“Or maybe about the job,” added Carol.

“Even the job. I think we may as well take that can out and remove one more immediate worry. Also, I’d like to know if it’s liquid or not.”

“Good,” said Joe. “Then as soon as you reach the boat, Jenny, please set Exit Lock Five—the little waste-disposal one near the shop—for automatic cycling, and the shop master inside for Activation Code Two. I may as well put the new machines to work. There should be about three hundred of them ready…” “What?” gasped Molly.

“—and about two hundred more to be finished. That will be enough, I hope. I made the bodies out of silicon and carbon compounds instead of metal, so the only raw material shortage is in electrical contacts; we’re low on silver now. The shop equipment can handle them up to a few more than five hundred.”

“But what are they?”

“You will have guessed, Molly. Small mappers, each with its own model storage unit, all interconnected electromagnetically, all radar equipped. They will be spread out through these caverns, plotting as they go, assembling a model of the interior of Enigma. Charley’s estimate of the length of time it would take to do it by ourselves was very discouraging, and it seemed best to use equipment that wasn’t limited by having to carry living operators. As soon as Jenny gets to the boat, she’ll start sending them after me, and I can begin mapping from these incurrent caves inward. They should get to your end of the planet—I’ve programmed them to stay in touch, so they won’t diffuse and try to map the whole sphere, and to go as far down as possible to make the trip a minimum-distance one—in a couple of weeks.”

“But…” Molly started to vent her feelings, and fell silent. Carol was less restrained.

“You said this end was more likely to have the life forms that restored the gas. Why not send them here first?”

“Jenny has specimens of those and will be able to tell us fairly soon whether that hypothesis is right. Charley and you two are already mapping the summer end. If you hadn’t managed to charge your batteries, naturally I’d have sent the new ones looking for you first. That was Activation Code One. Luckily, I was able to tell Jenny to key in Two; but I waited until I heard from you two, of course.”