Heavy Planet Part 5

One or two of the sailors expressed a willingness to jump down the cliff, to Barlennan's anxiety-he felt that the natural fear of height should not be replaced with complete contempt, even though the entire crew now shared his willingness to climb and jump. Lackland was called upon to help dissuade these foolhardy individuals, which he managed to do by computing that the sixtyfoot drop of the cliff was about equal to a one-foot fall at the lat.i.tude of their home country. This revived enough memory of childhood experience to put a stop to the idea. The captain, thinking over this event afterward, realized that by his own lifelong standards he had a crew composed entirely of lunatics, with himself well to the front in degree of aberration; but he was fairly sure that this particular form of insanity was going to be useful.

Ideas more practical than these were not forthcoming for some time; and Lackland took the opportunity to catch up on his sleep, which he badly needed. He had had two long sessions in his bunk, interrupted by a hearty meal, when the report of the surveying rocket came in. It was brief and discouraging. The cliff ran into the sea some six hundred miles northeast of their present location, almost exactly on the equator. In the opposite direction it ran for some twelve hundred miles, growing very gradually lower, and disappearing completely at about the five-gravity lat.i.tude. It was not perfectly straight, showing a deep bend away from the ocean at one point; the tank had struck it at this point. Two rivers fell over its edge within the limits of the bay, and the tank was neatly caught between them, since in the interests of common sanity the Bree could never be towed across either without first going many miles upstream from the tremendous cataracts. One of the falls was about thirty miles away, almost due south; the other approximately a hundred miles distant to the north and east around the curve of the cliff. The rocket had not, of course, been able to examine the entire stretch of escarpment in complete detail from the alt.i.tude it had had to maintain, but the interpreter was very doubtful that the tank could scale it at any point. The best bet, however, would be near one of the falls, where erosion was visible and might conceivably have created negotiable paths.

"How in blazes can a cliff like this form?" Lackland asked resentfully when he had heard all this. "Eighteen hundred miles of ridge just high enough to be a nuisance, and we have to run right into it. I bet it's the only thing of its kind on the planet."

"Don't bet too much," the surveyor retorted. "The physiography boys just nodded in pleasure when I told them about it. One of them said he was surprised you hadn't hit one earlier; then another piped up and said actually you'd expect most of them farther from the equator, so it wasn't surprising at all. They were still at it when I left them. I guess you're lucky that your small friend is going to do most of the traveling for you."

"That's a thought." Lackland paused as another idea struck him. "If these faults are so common, you might tell me whether there are any more between here and the sea. Will you have to run another survey?"

"No. I saw the geologists before I started on this one, and looked. If you can get down this step, you're all right-in fact, you could launch your friend's s.h.i.+p in the river at the foot and he could make it alone. Your only remaining problem is to get that sailboat hoisted over the edge."

"To get-hmm. I know you meant that figuratively, Hank, but you may have something there. Thanks for everything; I may want to talk to you later." Lackland turned away from the set and lay back on his bunk, thinking furiously. He had never seen the Bree afloat; she had been beached before he encountered Barlennan, and on the recent occasions when he had towed her across rivers he had himself been below the surface most of the time in the tank. Therefore he did not know how high the vessel floated. Still, to float at all on an ocean of liquid methane she must be extremely light, since methane is less than half as dense as water. Also she was not hollow-did not float, that is, by virtue of a large central air s.p.a.ce which lowered her average density, as does a steel s.h.i.+p on Earth. The "wood" of which the Bree was made was light enough to float on methane and support the s.h.i.+p's crew and a substantial cargo as well.

An individual raft, therefore, could not weigh more than a few ounces-perhaps a couple of pounds, on this world at this point. At that rate, Lackland himself could stand on the edge of the cliff and let down several rafts at a time; any two sailors could probably lift the s.h.i.+p bodily, if they could be persuaded to get under it. Lackland himself had no rope or cable other than what he was using to tow the sled; but that was one commodity of which the Bree herself had an ample supply. The sailors should certainly he able to rig hoisting gear that would take care of the situation-or could they? On Earth it would be elementary seamans.h.i.+p; on Mesklin, with these startling but understandable prejudices against lifting and jumping and throwing and everything else involving any height, the situation might be different. Well, Barlennan's sailors could at least tie knots, and the idea of towing should not be too strange to them now; so undoubtedly the matter could be straightened out. The real, final problem was whether or not the sailors would object to being lowered over the cliff along with their s.h.i.+p. Some men might have laid that question aside as strictly a problem for the s.h.i.+p's captain, but Lackland more than suspected that he would have to contribute to its solution.

Barlennan's opinion, however, was certainly needed at this point; and reaching out a heavy arm, Lackland energized his smaller transmitter and called his tiny friend.

"Barl, I've been wondering. Why couldn't your people lower the s.h.i.+p over the cliff on cables, one raft at a time, and rea.s.semble it at the bottom?"

"How would you get down?"

"I wouldn't. There is a large river about thirty miles south of here that should be navigable all the way to the sea, if Hank Stearman's report is accurate. What I'm suggesting is that I tow you over to the fall, help you any way I can in getting the Bree over the edge, watch you launch her in the river, and wish you the best of luck-all we can do for you from then on is give weather and navigation information, as we agreed. You have ropes, do you not, which will hold the weight of a raft?"

"Of course; ordinary cordage would take the weight of the entire s.h.i.+p in this neighborhood. We'd have to snub the lines against trees or your tank or something like that; the whole crew together couldn't furnish traction enough for the job. Still, that's no problem. I'd say you had the answer, Charles."

"How about the personnel? Will they like the idea of being lowered down that way?" Barlennan thought for a moment.

"I think it will be all right. I'll send them down on the rafts, with a job to do like fending off from the cliff. That will keep them from looking straight down, and sufficiently occupied so they shouldn't be thinking of the height. Anyway, with this light feeling everyone has"-Lackland groaned silently-"no one's much afraid of a fall anyway; not even as much as they should be. We'll make that part, all right. Had we better start for that cataract right away?"

"All right." Lackland hauled himself to his controls, suddenly very weary. His part of the job was nearly over, sooner than he had expected, and his body shrieked for relief from the endless weight it had dragged around for the last seven months. Perhaps he shouldn't have stayed through the winter, but tired as he was, he could not regret it.

The tank swung to the right and started moving once more, parallel to the cliff edge two hundred yards away. The Mesklinites might be getting over their horror of heights, but Lackland was developing one. Besides, he had never attempted to repair the main spotlight since their first battle with Mesklin's animal life, and he had no intention of driving close to that edge at night with only the running lights to guide him.

They made the cataract in a single lap of about twenty days. Both natives and Earthman heard it long before they arrived, at first a vague trembling in the air that gradually rose through a muted thunder to a roar that put even the Mesklinite vocal equipment to shame. It was day when they came in sight of it, and Lackland stopped involuntarily as they did so. The river was half a mile wide where it reached the brink, and smooth as gla.s.s-no rocks or other irregularities appeared to exist in its bed. It simply curled over the edge and spilled downward. The fall had eroded its way for a full mile back from the cliff line; and they had a splendid view of the gorge. The ripple marks gave no clue to the liquid's speed of fall, but the violence with which the spray erupted from the bottom did. Even in this gravity and atmosphere a permanent cloud of mist hid the lower half of the curved sheet, thinning gradually away from its foot to reveal the roiled, eddied surface of the lower river. There was no wind except that created by the fall itself, and the stream grew rapidly calmer as it moved smoothly away toward the ocean.

The crew of the Bree had gone overboard the moment the tank stopped; and the way they were strung out along the rim of the gorge indicated that there would not be much morale difficulty during the descent. Now Barlennan called them back to the s.h.i.+p, and work commenced at once. Lackland relaxed once more while cordage was dragged forth and a plumb line dropped over the edge to secure a more precise measure of the cliffs height. Some of the sailors began securing all loose gear about the rafts, though preparations for the original journey had left little to do in this respect; others reached down between the rafts and began unfastening the las.h.i.+ngs which held them together and checking at the same time the buffers that held them safely apart. They were fast workers, and raft after raft was dragged away from the main body of the s.h.i.+p.

Barlennan and his first mate, once this work was well under way, went over to the edge to determine the best place for the lowering operation. The gorge itself was rejected at once; the river within its walls was too rough, even if they had wanted to do their rea.s.sembling while afloat. It turned out, however, that almost any point on the cliff face would be suitable, so the officers quickly chose one as close as possible to the mouth of the gorge. The rea.s.sembled s.h.i.+p or its separate parts would have to be dragged to the river without the tank's help, and there was no point in making the journey any longer than necessary.

A scaffold of masts was arranged at the edge to give a point of suspension far enough out to prevent rope friction, though the masts were not long enough to hold a raft completely away from the cliff face; a block and tackle, which Lackland observed with interest, was attached to the scaffold, and the first raft dragged into position. It was adjusted in a rope sling that would carry it horizontally, the main cable attached to the sling and hitched around a tree, several sailors seized the cable, and the raft was pushed over the edge.

Everything held up, but Dondragmer and his captain inspected each part very, very carefully before the mate and one of the crew crawled aboard the platform that hung somewhat slanted against the rock an inch or so below the edge. For a moment after they had gone aboard everyone watched expectantly; but again nothing happened, and Dondragmer finally gave the signal to lower away. All the crew members who were not on the cable rushed to the edge to watch the descent. Lackland would have liked to watch it himself, but had no intention of venturing either the tank or his armored person close enough to do so. Beside his own uneasiness at the height, the sight of the cordage the Mesklinites were using made him unhappy; it looked as though an Earthly clerk would scorn it for tying a two-pound bag of sugar.

An excited hooting and general withdrawal from the edge indicated the safe arrival of the first raft, and Lackland blinked as the sailors proceeded to stack several more on top of each other while the cable was being drawn up. Apparently no more time than could be helped was to be wasted. Confident as he was in Barlennan's judgment, the Earthman suddenly decided he wanted to watch the stack of rafts make the descent. He was on the point of donning his armor when he remembered that it was not necessary; he relaxed again, called Barlennan, and asked him to arrange one or more of the little communicators so that their "eyes" could cover the desired activity. The captain complied immediately, having a sailor lash one of the sets to the scaffold so that it looked almost straight down and placing another on top of the pile of rafts which had just been secured in their rope sling. Lackland switched from one to the other as the operation proceeded. The first was a trifle more disconcerting than he had expected, since the supporting cable was visible for only a few feet from the pickup lens and the load seemed to be floating down without support; the other gave him a view of the cliff face that would undoubtedly have been highly interesting to a geologist. With the descent half completed, it occurred to him to call Toorey to invite the interested parties to watch. The geology department responded and commented freely during the rest of the process.

Load after load went down, with little variety to make the operation more interesting. Toward the end a longer cable was installed and the lowering was done from below, since the greater part of the crew had now descended; and Lackland had a suspicion of the reason when Barlennan finally turned away from the scene of action and leaped toward the tank. The radio which had been used from that position was permanently mounted, and had not been taken down with the others.

"We have only about two more loads, Charles," the captain opened. "There will be a slight problem in connection with the last one. We'd like to keep all our gear if possible, which means dismantling and sending down the masts used for our lowering tackle. We don't want to throw them down because we're not sure they'd take it-the soil below is very rocky. Would you be willing to get into your armor and lower the final load by hand? I will arrange for it to consist of one raft, those few masts and the a.s.sociated tackle, and myself." Lackland was startled by the last item.

"You mean you would trust yourself to my strength, knowing that I'm already under three and a half times my normal gravity and will have the weight of my armor as well?"

"Certainly. The armor will easily be heavy enough to serve as anchor, and if you take a turn of the rope about your own body you can pay it out gradually. I don't see any difficulty; the load will be only a few of your pounds."

"Not that way, perhaps, but there's another point. Your rope is very thin indeed, and the handling clamps of my armor are somewhat clumsy when it comes to managing small objects. What if the cord slips out of my grip?" That silenced Barlennan for a moment.

"What is the smallest object you could handle with reasonable security?"

"Oh-one of your masts, I should say."

"There is no trouble, then. We will wind the rope about a mast, and you can use that as a windla.s.s. You can toss mast and rope over afterward; if the stick is broken the loss will not be too great."

Lackland shrugged. "It's your health and property, Barl. I don't have to say I'll be careful; I wouldn't want anything to happen to you, especially through my negligence. I'll be out shortly." The Mesklinite, satisfied, leaped back to the ground and began to give the necessary orders to the few remaining sailors. The second-last load went down with all of these; and a few moments later the Earthman emerged from his conveyance.

Barlennan was waiting for him. A single raft now lay at the cliff edge, tied in its sling and ready to go. A radio and the bundled remains of the scaffolding lay upon it, and the captain was dragging the mast which had the line wrapped about it toward Lackland. The man's approach was slow, for the terrible fatigue seemed to grow with every instant; but he finally reached a point about ten feet from the edge, reached over as far as his clumsy garment would permit, and took the mast from the tiny being who had reared up to meet him. Without a word of caution or any other suggestion of doubt in his big friend, Barlennan turned back to the raft, made sure its cargo was lashed securely, pushed it until it was teetering on the edge of the cliff, and climbed aboard.

He turned for a last look at Lackland, and the man could have sworn that he winked. Then, "Hang on, Charles," came the voice over the radio; and the captain stepped deliberately to the outer edge of the precariously balanced raft. His pincers were securely caught in the las.h.i.+ngs, which was all that kept him aboard as the platform teetered once and slipped over the rim.

There was enough slack in the line Lackland was holding to permit a couple of feet of fall; and raft and pa.s.senger vanished instantly. A sharp jerk told the man that at least the line was still holding, and an instant later Barlennan's voice cheerfully conveyed the same information. "Lower away!" was the concluding phrase; and Lackland obeyed.

It was rather like handling a kite, at least in the form of windla.s.s he was using-simply a cord wound on a stick. It revived childhood memories; but if he lost this kite he would, he knew, be much longer in getting over it. He did not have the best possible grip on the mast, and he slowly pivoted so as to wind the cord about his body before he tried to change holds. Then, satisfied, he paid out slowly.

Barlennan's voice came at intervals, always with something encouraging; it was as though the midget had an idea of the anxiety in Lackland's mind. "Halfway now." "Smooth going." "You know, I don't mind looking down even this far, now." "Almost there-just a little more-that's it; I'm down. Hold onto the tackle for a little, please; I'll tell you when the area is clear and it's all right to throw it down."

Lackland continued to obey. For a keepsake, he tried to break off a foot or two from the end of the cable, but found it impossible even with armored hands. However, the edge of one of the locking snaps on his armor proved sharp enough to cut the stuff, and he wound the souvenir around his arm before starting to carry out the remaining requests of his ally.

"We have things out from underneath, Charles; you can let go your end of the rope and toss the mast over whenever you want." The fine cord slithered instantly out of sight, and the ten-inch twig that was one of the Bree's main booms followed. Seeing things fall free in triple gravity, Lackland found, was even worse than thinking about it. Maybe it would be better at the poles-then you couldn't see them at all. Not where an object falls some two miles in the first second! But perhaps the abrupt vanis.h.i.+ng would be just as hard on the nerves. Lackland shrugged off these thoughts and turned back to the tank.

For the couple of hours the process took he watched the Bree's rea.s.sembly through the vision sets. With just the traces of a wish that he might go along, he saw the cl.u.s.ter of rafts pushed out into the broad stream, and listened to the farewells of Barlennan, Dondragmer, and the crew-he could guess at the meaning of the sounds uttered even by the sailors who spoke no English. Presently the current bore the vessel far enough from the cliff to be seen from the tank's position. Lackland raised a hand silently in farewell, and watched her as she shrank slowly and finally vanished toward the distant sea.

For long minutes he sat silently; then roused himself to call the Toorey base.

"You may as well come and pick me up. I've done all I can on the surface."

10: HOLLOW BOATS.

The river, once away from the vicinity of the great fall, was broad and slow. At first the air trapped by the descending "water" furnished a breeze toward the sea, and Barlennan ordered the sails set to take advantage of it; but this presently died out and left the s.h.i.+p at the mercy of the current. This was going in the right direction, however, and no one complained. The land adventure had been interesting and profitable, for several of the plant products collected could certainly be sold at high prices once they reached home; but no one was sorry to be afloat again. Some looked back at the waterfall as long as it could be seen, and once everyone stared into the west to catch a glimpse of the rocket as the muted thunder of its approach reached them; but in general the feeling was one of antic.i.p.ation.

The banks on either side began to draw more and more attention as they proceeded. During their overland journey they had become accustomed to the sight of an occasional upright growth of the sort that the Flyer had called a "tree," usually seeing one every few days. They had been fascinating objects at first, and had, indeed, proved a source of one of the foods they planned to sell at home. Now the trees were becoming more and more numerous, threatening to replace the more familiar sprawling, rope-branched plants entirely, and Barlennan began to wonder if even a colony planted here might not be able to support itself by trade in what the Flyer had called fir cones.

For a long time, fully fifty miles, no intelligent life was sighted, though animals in fair numbers were seen along the banks. The river itself teemed with fish, though none appeared large enough to const.i.tute a danger to the Bree. Eventually the river on either side became lined with trees, which extended no one could tell how far inland; and Barlennan, spurred by curiosity, ordered the s.h.i.+p steered closer to sh.o.r.e to see what a forest-he had no such word for it, of course-looked like.

It was fairly bright even in the depths of the wood, since the trees did not spread out at the top nearly as much as is common on Earth, but it was strange enough. Drifting along almost in the shadow of the weird plants, many of the crew felt a resurgence of their old terror of having solid objects overhead; and there was a general feeling of relief when the captain silently gestured the helmsman to steer away from the bank once more.

If anyone lived there they were welcome to it. Dondragmer expressed this opinion aloud, and was answered by a general mutter of approval. Unfortunately, his words were either not heard or not understood by listeners on the bank. Perhaps they were not actually afraid that the Bree's crew meant to take their forest away from them, but they decided to take no chances; and once more the visitors from high-weight suffered an experience with projectile weapons.

The armory this time consisted entirely of spears. Six of them flew silently from the top of the bank and stuck quivering in the Bree's deck; two more glanced from the protective sh.e.l.ls of sailors and clattered about on the rafts before coming to rest. The sailors who had been hit leaped convulsively from pure reflex, and both landed yards away in the river. They swam back and clambered aboard without a.s.sistance, for all eyes were directed toward the source of the mysterious attack. Without orders the helmsman angled more sharply toward the center of the river.

"I wonder who sent those-and if they used a machine like the Flyer's. There wasn't the same noise." Barlennan spoke half aloud, not caring whether he were answered. Terblannen wrenched one of the spears out of the deck and examined its hardwood point; then, experimentally, he threw it back at the receding sh.o.r.e. Since throwing was a completely new art to him, except for experiments such as he had made in getting objects to the top of the tank in the stone-rollers' city, he threw it as a child throws a stick, and it went spinning end over end back to the woods. Barlennan's question was partly answered; short as his crewman's arms were, the weapon reached the bank easily. The invisible attackers at least didn't need anything like Lackland's gun, if they were anything like ordinary people physically. There seemed no way to tell what the present attackers were, and the captain had no intention of finding out by direct examination. The Bree kept on downstream, while an account of the affair went winging up to Lackland on distant Toorey.

For fully a hundred miles the forest continued while the river widened gradually. The Bree kept out in midstream for a time after her single encounter with the forest dwellers, but even that did not keep her completely out of trouble. Only a few days after the arrival of the spears, a small clearing was sighted on the left bank. His viewpoint only a few inches off the surface prevented Barlennan from seeing as well as he would have liked, but there were certainly objects in that clearing worthy of examination. After some hesitation he ordered the s.h.i.+p closer to that bank. The objects looked a little like trees, but were shorter and thicker. Had he been higher he would have seen small openings in them just above ground level which might have been informative; Lackland, watching through one of the vision sets, compared the things at once to pictures he had seen of the huts of African natives, but he said nothing yet. Actually he was more interested in a number of other items lying partly in and partly out of the river in front of what he already a.s.sumed to be a village. They might have been logs or crocodiles, for they were not too clearly visible at this distance, but he rather suspected they were canoes. It would be interesting to see how Barlennan reacted to a boat so radically different from his own.

It was quite a while, however, before anyone on the Bree realized that the "logs" were canoes or the other mysterious objects dwellings. For a time, in fact, Lackland feared that they would drift on downstream without ever finding out; their recent experience had made Barlennan very cautious indeed. However, there were others besides Lackland who did not want the s.h.i.+p to drift by without stopping, and as she approached the point on her course opposite the village a red and black flood of bodies poured over the bank and proved that the Earthman's conjecture had been correct. The loglike objects were pushed into the stream, each carrying fully a dozen creatures who apparently belonged to the identical species as the Bree's crew. They were certainly alike in shape, size, and coloring; and as they approached the s.h.i.+p they uttered earsplitting hoots precisely like those Lackland had heard on occasion from his small friends.

The canoes were apparently dugouts, hollowed out sufficiently so that only the head end of each crew member could be seen; from their distribution, Lackland suspected that they lay herringbone fas.h.i.+on inside, with the paddles operated by the foremost sets of pincer-equipped arms.

The Bree's leeward flame throwers were manned, though Barlennan doubted that they would be useful under these conditions. Krendoranic, the munitions officer, was working furiously at one of his storage bins, but no one knew what he was up to; there was no standard procedure for his department in such a situation. Actually, the entire defense routine of the s.h.i.+p was being upset by the lack of wind, something that almost never occurred on the open sea.

Any chance there might have been to make effective use of the flame dust vanished as the fleet of canoes opened out to surround the Bree. Two or three yards from her on all sides, they glided to a stop, and for a minute or two there was silence. To Lackland's intense annoyance, the sun set at this point and he was no longer able to see what went on. The next eight minutes he had to spend trying to attach meaning to the weird sounds that came over the set, which was not a very profitable effort since none of them formed words in any language he knew. There was nothing that denoted any violent activity; apparently the two crews were simply speaking to each other in experimental fas.h.i.+on. He judged, however, that they could find no common language, since there appeared to be nothing like a sustained conversation.

With sunrise, however, he discovered that the night had not been wholly uneventful. By rights, the Bree should have drifted some distance downstream during the darkness; actually, she was still opposite the village. Furthermore she was no longer far out in the river, but only a few yards from the bank. Lackland was about to ask Barlennan what he meant by taking such a risk, and also how he had managed to maneuver the Bree, when it became evident that the captain was just as surprised as he at this turn of events.

Wearing a slightly annoyed expression, Lackland turned to one of the men sitting beside him, with the remark: "Barl has let himself get into trouble already. I know he's a smart fellow, but with over thirty thousand miles to go I don't like to see him getting held up in the first hundred."

"Aren't you going to help him? There's a couple of billion dollars, not to mention a lot of reputations, riding with him."

"What can I do? All I could give would be advice, and he can size up the situation better than I can. He can see it better, and is dealing with his own sort of people."

"From what I can see, they're about as much his sort as the South Sea Islanders were Captain Cook's. I grant they appear to be the same species, but if they're, say, cannibals your friend may really be in hot water."

"I still couldn't help him, could I? How do you talk a cannibal out of a square meal when you don't know his language and aren't even facing him in person? What attention would he pay to a little square box that talked to him in a strange language?" The other raised his eyebrows a trifle.

"While I'm not mind reader enough to predict that one in detail, I would suggest that in such a case he might just possibly be scared enough to do almost anything. As an ethnologist I can a.s.sure you that there are primitive races on a lot of planets, including our own Earth, who would bow down, hold square dances, and even make sacrifices to a box that talked to them."

Lackland digested that remark in silence for a few moments, nodded thoughtfully, and turned back to the screens.

A number of sailors had seized spare masts and were trying to pole back toward the center of the river, but were having no success. Dondragmer, after a brief investigation around the outer rafts, reported that they were in a cage formed of piles driven into the river bed; only the upstream side was open. It might or might not be coincidence that the cage was just large enough to accommodate the Bree. As this report was made, the canoes drifted away from the three closed sides of the cage and congregated on the fourth; and the sailors, who had heard the mate's report and prepared to pole in the upstream direction, looked to Barlennan for instructions. After a moment's thought, he motioned the crew to the far end of the s.h.i.+p and crawled alone to the end facing the a.s.sembled canoes. He had long since figured out how his s.h.i.+p had been moved; with the coming of darkness some of the paddlers must have gone quietly overboard, swum beneath the Bree, and pushed her where they wanted. There was nothing too surprising in that; he himself could exist for some time beneath the surface of river or ocean, which normally carried a good deal of dissolved hydrogen. What bothered him was just why these people wanted the s.h.i.+p.

As he pa.s.sed one of the provision lockers he pulled back its cover and extracted a piece of meat. This he carried to the edge of the s.h.i.+p and held out toward the crowd of now silent captors. Presently some unintelligible gabbling sounded among them; then this ceased, as one of the canoes eased slowly forward and a native in the bow reared up and forward toward the offering. Barlennan let him take it. It was tested and commented upon; then the chief, if that was his position, tore off a generous fragment, pa.s.sed the rest back to his companions, and thoughtfully consumed what he had kept. Barlennan was encouraged; the fact that he hadn't kept it all suggested that these people had some degree of social development. Obtaining another piece, the captain held it out as before; but this time, when the other reached for it, it was withheld. Barlennan put it firmly behind him, crawled to the nearest of the piles that were imprisoning his s.h.i.+p, indicated it, gestured to the Bree, and pointed out into the river. He was sure his meaning was plain, as undoubtedly it was; certainly the human watchers far above understood him, though no word of their language had been used. The chief, however, made no move. Barlennan repeated the gestures, and finished by holding out the meat once more.

Any social consciousness the chief possessed must have been strictly in connection with his own society; for as the captain held out the meat a second time a spear licked out like the tongue of a chameleon, impaled the food, jerked it out of Barlennan's grasp, and was withdrawn before any one of the startled sailors could move. An instant later the chief gave a single barking order; and as he did so half the crew of each of the canoes behind him leaped forward.

The sailors were completely unused to aerial a.s.sault, and had also relaxed a trifle when their captain began his negotiation; in consequence, there was nothing resembling a fight. The Bree was captured in something less than five seconds. A committee headed by the chief began at once to investigate the food lockers, and their satisfaction was evident even through the language barrier. Barlennan watched with dismay as the meat was dragged out on deck in obvious preparation for transferral to a canoe, and for the first time it occurred to him that there was a possible source of advice which he had not yet used.

"Charles!" he called, speaking English for the first time since the incident had begun. "Have you been watching?" Lackland, with mixed anxiety and amus.e.m.e.nt, answered at once.

"Yes, Barl; I know what's been going on." He watched the Bree's captors for reaction as he spoke, and had no reason to feel disappointed. The chief, who had been facing away from the point where the radios were lashed, switched ends like a startled rattlesnake and then began looking around for the source of the voice with an unbelievably human air of bewilderment. One of his men who had been facing the radios indicated to him the one whose speaker Lackland had used, but after poking around the impenetrable box with knife and lance the chief obviously rejected this suggestion. This was the moment the Earthman chose for speaking again.

"Do you think there's any chance of getting them scared of the radios, Barl?"

The chiefs head was about two inches from the speaker this time, and Lackland had made no effort to reduce the volume. Consequently there was no question where the sound had come from; and the chief began backing away from the noisy box. He was evidently trying to go slowly enough to satisfy his self-respect and fast enough to suit his other emotions, and once again Lackland had trouble in not laughing aloud.

Before Barlennan had a chance to reply Dondragmer moved over to the pile of meat, selected a choice piece, and laid it in front of the radio set with every indication of humility. He had taken a chance on having a pair of knives meet in his body, and knew it; but his guards were too absorbed by the new situation to take offense at his motion. Lackland, understanding how the mate had interpreted his own lead, followed on; he reduced the volume in the hope that his next utterance would seem less like anger to the canoeists, and heartily approved the mate's action.

"Good work, Don. Every time one of you does something like that I'll try to show approval; and I'll bark like n.o.body's business at anything I don't want our new acquaintances to be doing. You know the appropriate actions better than I, so just do everything in your power to make 'em think these radio boxes are high-powered beings who'll deliver lightning if properly annoyed."

"I understand; we can hold our end," replied the mate. "I thought that was what you had in mind."

The chief, gathering his courage once more, suddenly lunged at the nearest radio with his spear. Lackland remained silent, feeling that the natural result on the wooden point would be impressive enough; the sailors entered with a will into the game outlined by the Flyer. With what Lackland supposed were the equivalent of gasps of pious horror, they turned away from the scene and covered their eyes with their pincers. After a moment, seeing that nothing further was happening, Barlennan offered another piece of meat, at the same time gesturing in a way meant to convey the impression that he was begging for the life of the ignorant stranger. The river people were quite evidently impressed, and the chief drew back a little, gathered his committee, and began to discuss the whole situation with them. Finally one of the chiefs counselors, in what was evidently an experiment, picked up a piece of meat and gave it to the nearest radio. Lackland was about to express gentle thanks when Dondragmer's voice came, "Refuse it!" Not knowing why but willing to trust the mate's judgment, Lackland turned up the volume and emitted a lionlike roar. The donor leaped back in genuine and unmistakable terror; then, at a sharp order from the chief, he crawled forward, retrieved the offending bit of food, selected another from the pile on the deck, and presented that.

"All right." It was the mate's voice again, and the Earthman lowered the volume of the speaker.

"What was wrong the other time?" he asked quietly.

"I wouldn't have given that piece to a ternee belonging to my worst enemy," replied Dondragmer.

"I keep finding resemblances between your people and mine in the darnedest situations," Lackland remarked. "I hope this business is suspended for the night; I can't see what's going on in the dark. If anything happens that I should react to, for heaven's sake tell me." This remark was prompted by the arrival of sunset once more, and Barlennan a.s.sured him that he would be kept informed. The captain had recovered his poise, and was once again more or less in control of the situation-as far as a prisoner could be.

The night was spent by the chief in discussion; his voice, interrupted occasionally by others which must belong to his counselors, came clearly to the Earthmen far above. By dawn he had apparently reached a decision. He had drawn a little apart from his counselors and laid down his weapons; now, as sunlight slanted once more across the deck, he advanced toward Barlennan, waving the latter's guards away as he approached. The captain, already fairly sure in his mind what the other wanted, waited calmly. The chief halted with his head a few inches from Barlennan's, paused impressively for a moment, and began to speak.

His words were still unintelligible to the sailors, naturally enough; but the gestures accompanying them were clear enough to give the speech meaning even to the distant human watchers.

Quite plainly, he wanted a radio. Lackland found himself speculating idly on just what supernatural powers the chief supposed the device to possess. Perhaps he wanted it to protect the village from enemies, or to bring luck to his hunters. That was not really an important question, however; what mattered would be his att.i.tude when the request was refused. That might possibly be rather anti-social, and Lackland was still worrying a trifle.

Barlennan, showing what his human friend felt was rather more courage than sense, answered the speech briefly; a single word and a gesture which Lackland had long since come to recognize comprised the reply. "No" was the first Mesklinite word which Lackland learned beyond doubt, and he learned it for the first time now. Barlennan was very definite.

The chief, to the relief of at least one watcher, did not take a belligerent att.i.tude. Instead, he gave a brief order to his men. Several of these at once laid aside their weapons and began restoring the looted food to the lockers from which it had been taken. If freedom were not enough for one of the magic boxes, he was willing to pay more. Both Barlennan and Lackland more than suspected that the fellow was now afraid to use force, badly as his possessive instincts were aroused.

With half the food returned, the chief repeated his request; when it was refused as before, he gave an amazingly human gesture of resignation and ordered his men to restore the rest. Lackland was getting uneasy.

"What do you think he'll do when you refuse him now, Barl?" he asked softly. The chief looked at the box hopefully; perhaps it was arguing with its owner, ordering him to give his captor what he wanted.

"I'm not sure enough to venture a prediction," the Mesklinite replied. "With luck, he'll bring us more stuff from the village to add to the price; but I'm not sure luck goes that far. If the radio were less important, I'd give it to him now."

"For heaven's sake!" The ethnologist sitting beside Lackland practically exploded at this point. "Have you been going through all this rigmarole and risking your life and those of your men just to hang onto a cheap vision set?"

"Hardly cheap," muttered Lackland. "They were designed to hold up at Mesklin's poles, under Mesklinite atmosphere, and through the handling of Mesklinite natives."

"Don't quibble!" snapped the student of cultures. "What are those sets down there for if not to get information? Give one to that savage! Where could it be better placed? And how could we observe the everyday life of a completely strange race better than through that eye? Charles, sometimes I wonder at you!"

"That will leave three in Barlennan's possession, of which one absolutely must get to the south pole. I see your point, but I think we'd better get Rosten's approval before we actually leave one this early on the way."

"Why? What does he have to do with it? He's not risking anything like Barlennan, and doesn't care about watching that society like some of the rest of us. I say leave it; I'm sure Barlennan wants to leave it; and it seems to me that Barlennan has the final say in any case."

The captain, who had of course overheard this, cut in.

"You forget, friend of Charles, that the radios are not my property. Charles let me take them, at my suggestion to be sure, as a safety measure, so that at least one would reach its goal even though unavoidable incidents deprived me of the others. It seems to me that he, not I, is the one whose word should be final." Lackland answered instantly.

"Do as you think best, Barl. You are on the spot; you know your world and its people better than any of us can hope to; and if you do decide to leave one with these people, even that will do some good to my friends, as you have heard."

"Thank you, Charles." The captain's mind was made up in the instant the Flyer finished speaking. Fortunately the chief had listened enthralled to the conversation, making no attempt to further his own interests while it was going on; now Barlennan, keeping up the play to the end, called some of his crew and gave swift orders.