We Have Fed Our Sea

14

Seen from a view turret on the observation deck, the planet looked eerily like its parent star which had murdered it. Ryerson crouched in darkness, staring out to darkness. Against strewn constellations there lay a gigantic outline with wan streaks and edgings of gray. As he watched, Ryerson saw it march across the Milky Way and out of his sight. But it was the Cross which moved, he thought, circling her hope in fear.

I stand on Mount Nebo, he thought, and down there is my Promised Land.

Irrationally — but the months had made them all odd, silent introverts, Trappists because meaningful conversation was too rare and precious to spill without due heed — he reached into his breast pocket. He took forth Tamara’s picture and held it close to him. Sometimes he woke up breathing the fragrance of her hair. Have a look, he told her. We found it. In a heathen adoration: You are my luck, Tamara. You found it.

As the black planet came back into sight, monstrously swallowing suns — it was only a thousand or so kilometers away — Ryerson turned his wife’s image outward so she could see what they had gained.

“Are you there, Dave?”

Maclaren’s voice came from around the cylinder of the living section. It had grown much lower in this time of search. Often you could scarcely hear Maclaren when he spoke. And the New Zealander, once in the best condition of them all, had lately gotten thinner than the other two, until his eyes stared from caves. But then, thought Ryerson, each man aboard had had to come to terms with himself, one way or another, and there had been a price. In his own case, he had paid with youth.

“Coming.” Ryerson pulled himself around the deck, between the instruments. Maclaren was at his little desk, with a clipboard full of scrawled paper in one hand. Nakamura had just joined him. The Saraian had gone wholly behind a mask, more and more a polite unobtrusive robot. Ryerson wondered whether serenity now lay within the man, or the loneliest circle of hell, or both.

“I’ve got the data pretty well computed,” said Maclaren.

Ryerson and Nakamura waited. There had been curiously little exultation when the planet finally revealed itself. I, thought Ryerson, have become a plodder. Nothing is quite real out here — there is only a succession of motions, in my body and my brain — but I can celebrate no victory, because there is none, until the final and sole victory: Tamara.

But I wonder why Terangi and Seiichi didn’t cheer?

Maclaren ruffled through his papers. “It has a smaller mass and radius than Earth,” he said, “but a considerably higher density suggesting it’s mostly nickel-iron. No satellite, of course. And, even though the surface gravity is a bit more than Earth’s, no atmosphere. Seems to be bare rock down there or metal, I imagine. Solid, anyhow.”

“How large was it once?” murmured Nakamura.

Maclaren shrugged. “That would be pure guesswork,” he said. “I don’t know which planet of the original system this is. One or two of the survivors may have crashed on the primary by now, you see. My personal guess, though, is that it was the 61 Cygni C type — more massive than Jupiter, though of less bulk because of core degeneracy. It had an extremely big orbit. Even so, the supernova boiled away all its hydrogen and probably some of the heavier elements, too. But that took time, and the planet still had this much mass left when the star decayed into a white dwarf. Of course, with the pressure of the outer layers removed, the core reverted to normal density, which must have been a pretty spectacular catastrophe in itself. Since then, the residual stellar gases have been making the planet spiral slowly inward, for hundreds of megayears. And now—”

“Now we found it,” said Ryerson. “With three weeks’ food supply to spare.”

“And the germanium still to get,” said Maclaren.

Nakamura drew a breath. His eyes went to the deck “beneath” his feet. Far aft was a storage compartment which had been left open to the bitterness of space; and a dead man, lashed to a stanchion.

“Had there been four of us,” he said, “we would have consumed our supplies already and be starving. I am most humbly grateful to Engineer Sverdlov.”

Maclaren’s tone was dry. “He didn’t die for that reason.”

“No. But has he given us less merely because it was an accident?”

They floated a while in stillness. Then Maclaren shook himself and said: “We’re wasting time. This ship was never intended to land on a planet. Since I’ve already informed you any world we found might very likely use vacuum for sky, and you didn’t object, I assume the aircraft can make a landing.”

Nakamura crossed his legs and rested impassively, hands folded on his lap. “How familiar are you with the standard exploratory technique?” he inquired.

“Not very,” confessed Maclaren. “I gather that aircraft are preferred for reasons of mass economy.”

“And even more for maneuverability. A nuclear-powered vessel, using wings and turbojets, can rise high into an atmosphere, above the worst air resistance, without having to expend the reaction mass of a rocket. Likewise it can land more easily and safely in the first place. The aircraft which we carry, dismantled, are intended to leave their orbiting mother ship with a short rocket burst, slip into the atmosphere of a new planet, and descend. The return is more difficult, of course, but they get into the stratosphere before applying the non-ionic rocket drive. This in turn takes them into space proper, where their ion accelerators will work. Naturally, the cabins being sealed, any kind of atmosphere will serve them.

“Now, this is for exploration purposes. But these auxiliary craft are also capable of landing on rockets alone. When the time has come to establish a beam-relay station, some airless lifeless satellite is chosen, to avoid the necessity of quarantine. The craft shuttle back and forth, carrying the ship’s dismantled transceiver. This is reassembled on the surface. Thereby the satellite’s own mass becomes available to the matterbank, and any amount of material can be reconstructed according to the signals from the home station. The first things sent through are usually the parts for a much larger transceiver station, which can handle many tons of mass at a time.”

“Well, good,” said Maclaren. “That was more or less what I thought. Let’s land and — oh, oh.”

Ryerson felt a smile tugging his lips, though it was not a happy one. “You see?” he murmured.

Maclaren regarded him closely. “You don’t seem too discouraged,” he said. “There must be an answer.”

Ryerson nodded. “I’ve already spoken with Seiichi about it, while you were busy determining the exact characteristics of the planet. It’s not going to be fun, but — Well, let him tell you.”

Maclaren said slowly: “I had hoped, it was at least possible, that any planet we found would have a surviving satellite, small enough to land the whole ship on, or lay alongside, if you want to consider it that way. It would have been the best thing for us. But I’m sure now that this lump has no companion of any kind. So we’ll have to get our germanium down there.”

“Which we could also have done, had we been fortunate enough to locate the planet sooner,” Nakamura told him. “We can take aircraft down to the surface even now. But we would have to transship all the mining and separating equipment, establish a working space and an airdome — It is too much work for three men to do before our three weeks of supplies are eaten up, and then the actual mining would still remain.”

Maclaren nodded. “I should have thought of this myself,” he said. “I wonder how sane and sensible we are — how can we measure rationality, when we are all the human race we know for tens of light-years? Well. So I didn’t think and you didn’t talk. Nevertheless, I gather there’s a way out of our dilemma.”

“Yes,” said the pilot. “A riskful way, but any other is certain death. We can take the ship down, and use her for our ready-made workshop and airdome.”

“The Cross? But… well, of course the gravitation here is no problem to her, nor the magnetism now that the drive is shielded — but we can’t make a tail landing. We’d crumple the web, and… hell’s clanging bells, she can’t land at all! She’s not designed for it! Not maneuverable enough, why, it takes half an hour just to swing her clear around on gyros.”

Nakamura said calmly, “I have made calculations for some time now, preparing for this eventuality. There was nothing we could do before knowing what we would actually find, but I do have some plans drawn up. We have six knocked-down auxiliary craft. Yes? It will not take long to assemble their non-ionic rocket drives, which are very simple devices, clamp these to the outside hull, and run their control systems through the ship’s console. I think if we all work hard we can have it assembled, tested, and functioning in two or three days. Each pair of rockets should be so mounted as to form a couple which will rotate the ship around one of the three orthogonal space axes. No? Thus the spaceship will become most highly responsive to piloting. Furthermore, we shall cut up the aircraft hulls, as well as whatever else we may need and can spare for this purpose, such as interior fittings. From this, we shall construct a tripod enclosing and protecting the stern assembly. It will be clumsy and unbalanced, of course — but I trust my poor maneuverings can compensate for that — and it will be comparatively weak — but with the help of radar and our powerful ion-blast, the ship can be landed very gently.”

“Hm-m-m.” Maclaren rubbed his chin. His eyes flickered between the other two faces. “It shouldn’t be hard to fix those rocket motors in place, as you say. But a tripod more than a hundred meters long, for a thing as massive as this ship — I don’t know. If nothing else, how about the servos for it?”

“Please.” Nakamura waved his words aside. “I realize we have not time to do this properly. My plan does not envision anything with self-adjusting legs. A simple, rigid structure must suffice. We can use the radar to select a nearly level landing place.”

“All places are, down there,” said Maclaren. “That iron was boiling once, and nothing has weathered it since. Of course, there are doubtless minor irregularities, which would topple us on our tripod — with a thousand tons of mass to hit the ground!”

Nakamura’s eyes drooped. “It will be necessary for me to react quickly,” he said. “That is the risk we take.”

When the ship was prepared, they met once on the observation deck, to put on their spacesuits. The hull might be cracked in landing. Maclaren and Ryerson would be down at the engine controls, Nakamura in the pilot’s turret, strapped into acceleration harness with only their hands left free.

Nakamura’s gaze sought Maclaren’s. “We may not meet again,” he said.

“Possible,” said Maclaren.

The small, compact body held steady, but Nakamura’s face thawed. He had suddenly, after all the time which was gone, taken on an expression; and it was gentle.

“Since this may be my last chance,” he said, “I would like to thank you.”

“Whatever for?”

“I am not afraid any more.”

“Don’t thank me,” said Maclaren, embarrassed. “Something like that, a chap does for himself, y’ know.”

“You earned me the time for it, at least.” Nakamura made a weightless bow. “Sensei, give me your blessing.”

Maclaren said, with a degree of bewilderment: “Look here, everybody else has had more skill, contributed more, than I. I’ve told you a few things about the star and the planet, but you — Dave, at least — could have figured it out with slightly more difficulty. I’d never have known how to reconstruct a drive or a web, though; and I’d never be able to land this ship.”

“I was not speaking of material survival,” said Nakamura. A smile played over his mouth. “Still, do you remember how disorganized and noisy we were at first, and how we have grown so quiet since and work together so well? It is your doing. The highest interhuman art is to make it possible for others to use their arts.” Then, seriously: “The next stage of achievement, though, lies within a man. You have taught me. Knowingly or not, Terangi-san, you have taught me. I would give much to be sure you will… have the chance… to teach yourself.”

Ryerson appeared from the lockers. “Here they are,” he said. “Tin suits all around.”

Maclaren donned his armor and went aft. I wonder how much Seiichi knows. Does he know that I’ve stopped making a fuss about things, that I didn’t exult when we found this planet, not from stoicism but merely because I have been afraid to hope?

I wouldn’t even know what to hope for. All this struggle, just to get back to Earth and resume having fun? No, that’s too grotesque.

“We should have issued the day’s chow before going down,” said Ryerson. “Might not be in any shape to eat it at the other end.”

“Who’s got an appetite under present circumstances?” said Maclaren. “So postponing dinner is one way of stretching out the rations a few more hours.”

“Seventeen days’ worth, now.”

“We can keep going, foodless, for a while longer.”

“We’ll have to,” said Ryerson. He wet his lips. “We won’t mine our metal, and gasify it, and separate out the fractional per cent of germanium, and make those transistors, and tune the circuits, in any seventeen days.”

Maclaren grimaced. “Starvation, or the canned willy we’ve been afflicted with. Frankly, I don’t think there’s much difference.”

Hastily, he grinned at Ryerson, so the boy would know it for a jest. Grumbling was not allowed any more; they didn’t dare. And the positive side of conversation, the dreaming aloud of “when we get home,” had long since worn thin. Dinner-table conversation had been a ritual they needed for a while, but in a sense they had outgrown it. Now a man was driven into his own soul. And that’s what Seiichi meant, thought Maclaren. Only, I haven’t found anything in myself Or, no. I have. But I don’t know what. It’s too dark to see.

He strapped himself in and began checking instruments.

“Pilot to engine room. Read off!”

“Engine room to pilot. Plus voltage clear. Minus voltage clear. Mercury flow standard—”

The ship came to life.

And she moved down. Her blast slowed her in orbit, she spiraled, a featureless planet of black steel called her to itself. The path was cautious. There must be allowance for rotation; there must not be too quick a change of velocity, lest the ponderous sphere go wobbling out of control. Again and again the auxiliary motors blasted, spinning her, guiding her. The ion-drive was not loud, but the rockets roared on the hull like hammers.

And down. And down.

Only afterward, reconstructing confused memories, did Maclaren know what had happened; and he was never altogether sure. The Cross backed onto an iron plain. Her tripod touched, on one foot, on two. The surface was not quite level. She began to topple. Nakamura lifted her with a skill that blended main drive and auxiliaries into one smooth surge — such skill as only an utterly relaxed man could achieve, responding to the immense shifting forces as a part thereof. He rose a few hundred meters, changed position relative to the ground, and tried again. The tripod struck on two points once more. The ship toppled again. The third leg went off a small bluff, no more than a congealed ripple in the iron. It hit ground hard enough to buckle.

Nakamura raised ship barely in time. For an instant he poised in the sky on a single leg of flame, keeping his balance with snorts of rocket thrust. The bottom of the Cross’ stern assembly was not many meters above ground.

Suddenly he killed the ion drive. Even as the ship fell, he spun her clear around on the rotator jets. The Cross struck nose first. The pilot’s turret smashed, the bow caved in, automatic bulkheads slammed shut to save the air that whistled out. That was a great mass, and it struck hard. The sphere was crushed flat for meters aft of the bow. With her drive and her unharmed transceiver web aimed at the sky, the ship rested like Columbus’ egg.

And the stars glittered down upon her.

Afterward Maclaren wondered: Nakamura might well have decided days beforehand that he would probably never be able to land any other way. Or he might have considered that his rations would last two men an extra week. Or perhaps, simply, he found his dark bride.