orders needed for my work, I want to survey the steps you've taken to
carry out those parts of your instructions dealing with emergencies. I
want to see right away what you've done to beat this state of things. I
know they can't be beaten, but I intend to leave a report on what you've
tried!"
* * * * *
The _Warlock_ swung in emptiness around the planet Xosa II. It was
barely five thousand miles above the surface, so the mottled terrain of
the dry world flowed swiftly and perpetually beneath it. It did not seem
beneath, of course. It simply seemed out--away--removed from the ship.
And in the ship's hull there was artificial gravity, and light, and
there were the humming sounds of fans which kept the air in motion and
flowing through the air apparatus. Also there was food, and adequate
water, and the temperature was admirably controlled. But nothing
happened. Moreover, nothing could be expected to happen. There were
eight men in the crew, and they were accustomed to space-voyages which
lasted from one month to three. But they had traveled a good two months
from their last port. They had exhausted the visireels, playing them
over and over until they were intolerable. They had read and reread all
the bookreels they could bear. On previous voyages they had played chess
and similar games until it was completely predictable who would beat
whom in every possible contest.
Now they viewed the future with bitterness. The ship could not land,
because there was no landing grid in operation on the planet below them.
They could not depart, because the Lawlor drive simply does not work
within five diameters of an Earth-gravity planet. Space is warped only
infinitesimally by so thin a field, but a Lawlor drive needs almost
perfectly unstressed emptiness if it is to take hold. They did not have
fuel enough to blast out the necessary thirty-odd thousand miles against
gravity. The same consideration made their lifeboats useless. They could
not escape by rocket-power and their Lawlor drives, also, were
ineffective.
The crew of the _Warlock_ was bored. The worst of the boredom was that
it promised to last without limit. They had food and water and physical
comfort, but they were exactly in the situation of men sentenced to
prison for an unknown but enormous length of time. There was no escape.
There could be no alleviation. The prospect invited frenzy by
anticipation.
A fist fight broke out in the crew's quarters within two hours after the
_Warlock_ had established its orbit--as a first reaction to their
catastrophe. The skipper went through the ship and painstakingly
confiscated every weapon. He locked them up. He, himself, already felt
the nagging effect of jangling nerves. There was nothing to do. He
didn't know when there would ever be anything to do. It was a condition
to produce hysteria.
* * * * *
There was night. Outside and above the colony there were uncountable
myriads of stars. They were not the stars of Earth, of course, but
Bordman had never been on Earth. He was used to unfamiliar
constellations. He stared out a port at the sky, and noted that there
were no moons. He remembered, when he thought, that Xosa II had no
moons. There was a rustling of paper behind him. Aletha Redfeather
turned a page in a loose-leaf volume and painstakingly made a note. The
wall behind her held many more such books. From them could be extracted
the detailed history of every bit of work that had been done by the
colony-preparation crews. Separate, tersely-phrased items could be
assembled to make a record of individual men.
There had been incredible hardships, at first. There were heroic feats.
There had been an attempt to ferry water supplies down from the pole by
aircraft. It was not practical, even to build up a reserve of fluid.
Winds carried sand particles here as on other worlds they carried
moisture. Aircraft were abraded as they flew. The last working flier
made a forced landing five hundred miles from the colony. A caterwheel
expedition went out and brought the crew in. The caterwheel trucks were
armored with silicone plastic, resistant to abrasion, but when they got
back they had to be scrapped. There had been men lost in sudden
sand-squalls, and heroic searches for them, and once or twice rescues.
There had been cave-ins in the mines. There had been accidents. There
had been magnificent feats of endurance and achievement.
Bordman went to the door of the hull which was Ralph Redfeather's
Project Engineer office. He opened it. He stepped outside.
It was like stepping into an oven. The sand was still hot from the
sunshine just ended. The air was so utterly dry that Bordman instantly
felt it sucking at the moisture of his nasal passages. In ten seconds
his feet--clad in indoor footwear--were uncomfortably hot. In twenty the
soles of his feet felt as if they were blistering. He would die of the
heat at night, here! Perhaps he could endure the outside near dawn, but
he raged a little. Here where Amerinds and Africans lived and throve, he
could live unprotected for no more than an hour or two--and that at one
special time of the planet's rotation!
He went back in, ashamed of the discomfort of his feet and angrily
letting them feel scorched rather than admit to it.
Aletha turned another page.
"Look, here!" said Bordman angrily. "No matter what you say, you're
going to go back on the _Warlock_ before----"
She raised her eyes.
"We'll worry about that when the time comes. But I think not. I'd
rather stay here."
"For the present, perhaps," snapped Bordman. "But before things get too
bad you go back to the ship! They've rocket fuel enough for half a dozen
landings of the landing boat. They can lift you out of here!"
Aletha shrugged.
"Why leave here to board a derelict? The _Warlock_'s practically that.
What's your honest estimate of the time before a ship equipped to help
us gets here?"
Bordman would not answer. He'd done some figuring. It had been a
two-month journey from Trent--the nearest Survey base--to here. The
_Warlock_ had been expected to remain aground until the smelter it
brought could load it with pig metal. Which could be as little as two
weeks, but would surprise nobody if it was two months instead. So the
ship would not be considered due back on Trent for four months. It would
not be considered overdue for at least two more. It would be six months
before anybody seriously wondered why it wasn't back with its cargo.
There'd be a wait for lifeboats to come in, should there have been a
mishap in space. There'd eventually be a report of noncommunication to
the Colony Survey headquarters on Canna III. But it would take three
months for that report to be received, and six more for a
confirmation--even if ships made the voyages exactly at the most
favorable intervals--and then there should at least be a complaint from
the colony. There were lifeboats aground on Xosa II, for emergency
communication, and if a lifeboat didn't bring news of a planetary
crisis, no crisis would be considered to exist. Nobody could imagine a
landing grid failing!
Maybe in a year somebody would think that maybe somebody ought to ask
around about Xosa II. It would be much longer before somebody put a note
on somebody else's desk that would suggest that when, or if, a suitable
ship passed near Xosa II, or if one should be available for the inquiry,
it might be worth while to have the noncommunication from the planet
looked into. Actually, to guess at three years before another ship
arrived would be the most optimistic of estimates.
"You're a civilian," said Bordman shortly. "When the food and water run
low, you go back to the ship. You'll at least be alive when somebody
does come to see what's the matter here!"
Aletha said mildly:
"Maybe I'd rather not be alive. Will you go back to the ship?"
Bordman flushed. He wouldn't. But he said doggedly;
"I can order you sent on board, and your cousin will carry out the
order!"
"I doubt it very much," said Aletha pleasantly.
She returned to her task.
* * * * *
There were crunching footsteps outside the hulk. Bordman winced a
little. With insulated sandals, it was normal for these colonists to
move from one part of the colony to another in the open, even by
daylight. He, Bordman, couldn't take out-of-doors at night! His lips
twisted bitterly.
Men came in. There were dark men with rippling muscles under glistening
skin, and bronze Amerinds with coarse straight hair. Ralph Redfeather
was with them. Dr. Chuka came in last of all.
"Here we are," said Redfeather. "These are our foremen. Among us, I
think we can answer any questions you want to ask."
He made introductions. Bordman didn't try to remember the names.
Abeokuta and Northwind and Sutata and Tallgrass and T'ckka and
Spottedhorse and Lewanika---- They were names which in combination would
only be found in a very raw, new colony. But the men who crowded into
the office were wholly at ease, in their own minds as well as in the
presence of a senior Colonial Survey officer. They nodded as they were
named, and the nearest shook hands. Bordman knew that he'd have liked
their looks under other circumstances. But he was humiliated by the
conditions on this planet. They were not. They were apparently only
sentenced to death by them.
"I have to leave a report," said Bordman curtly--and he was somehow
astonished to know that he did expect to leave a report rather than make
one; he accepted the hopelessness of the colony's future--"on the
degree-of-completion of the work here. But since there's an emergency, I
have also to leave a report on the measures taken to meet it."
The report would be futile, of course. As futile as the coup-records
Aletha was compiling, which would be read only after everybody on the
planet was dead. But Bordman knew he'd write it. It was unthinkable that
he shouldn't.
"Redfeather tells me," he added, again curtly, "that the power in
storage can be used to cool the colony buildings--and therefore condense
drinking water from the air--for just about six months. There is food
for about six months. If one lets the buildings warm up a little, to
stretch the fuel, there won't be enough water to drink. Go on half
rations to stretch the food, and there won't be enough water to last and
the power will give out anyhow. No profit there!"
There were nods. The matter had been thrashed out long before.
"There's food in the _Warlock_ overhead," Bordman went on coldly, "but
they can't use the landing boat more than a few times. It can't use ship
fuel. No refrigeration to hold it stable. They couldn't land more than a
ton of supplies all told. There are five hundred of us here. No help
there!"
He looked from one to another.
"So we live comfortably," he told them with irony, "until our food and
water and minimum night-comfort run out together. Anything we do to try
to stretch anything is useless because of what happens to something
else. Redfeather tells me you accept the situation. What are you
doing--since you accept it?"
Dr. Chuka said amiably:
"We've picked a storage place for our records, and our miners are
blasting out space in which to put away the record of our actions to the
last possible moment. It will be sandproof. Our mechanics are building a
broadcast unit we'll spare a tiny bit of fuel for. It will run
twenty-odd years, broadcasting directions so it can be found regardless
of how the terrain is changed by drifting sand."
"And," said Bordman, "the fact that nobody will be here to give
directions."
Chuka added benignly:
"We're doing a great deal of singing, too. My people are ... ah ...
religious. When we are ... ah ... no longer here ... there have been
boastings that there'll be a well-practiced choir ready to go to work in
the next world."
White teeth showed in grins. Bordman was almost envious of men who could
grin at such a thought. But he went on grimly:
"And I understand that athletics have also been much practiced."
Redfeather said:
"There's been time for it. Climbing teams have counted coup on all the
worst mountains within three hundred miles. There's been a new record
set for the javelin, adjusted for gravity constant, and Johnny Cornstalk
did a hundred yards in eight point four seconds. Aletha has the records
and has certified them."
"Very useful!" said Bordman sardonically. Then he disliked himself for
saying it even before the bronze-skinned men's faces grew studiedly
impassive.
Chuka waved his hand.
"Wait, Ralph! Lewanika's nephew will beat that within a week!"
Bordman was ashamed again because Chuka had spoken to cover up his own
ill-nature.
"I take it back!" he said irritably. "What I said was uncalled for. I
shouldn't have said it! But I came here to do a completion survey and
what you've been giving me is material for an estimate of morale! It's
not my line! I'm a technician, first and foremost! We're faced with a
technical problem!"
Aletha spoke suddenly from behind him.
"But these are men, first and foremost, Mr. Bordman. And they're faced
with a very human problem--how to die well. They seem to be rather good
at it, so far."
Bordman ground his teeth. He was again humiliated. In his own fashion he
was attempting the same thing. But just as he was genetically not
qualified to endure the climate of this planet, he was not prepared for
a fatalistic or pious acceptance of disaster. Amerind and African,
alike, these men instinctively held to their own ideas of what the
dignity of a man called upon him to do when he could not do anything but
die. But Bordman's idea of his human dignity required him to be still
fighting: still scratching at the eyes of fate or destiny when he was
slain. It was in his blood or genes or the result of training. He simply
could not, with self-respect, accept any physical situation as hopeless
even when his mind assured him that it was.
* * * * *
"I agree," he said coldly, "but still I have to think in technical
terms. You might say that we are going to die because we cannot land the
_Warlock_ with food and equipment. We cannot land the _Warlock_ because
we have no landing grid. We have no landing grid because it and all the
material to complete it is buried under millions of tons of sand. We
cannot make a new light-supply-ship type of landing grid because we have
no smelter to make beams, nor power to run it if we had, yet if we had
the beams we could get the power to run the smelter we haven't got to
make the beams. And we have no smelter, hence no beams, no power, no
prospect of food or help because we can't land the _Warlock_. It is
strictly a circular problem. Break it at any point and all of it is
solved."
One of the dark men muttered something under his breath to those near
him. There were chuckles.
"Like Mr. Woodchuck," explained the man, when Bordman's eyes fell on
him. "When I was a little boy there was a story like that."
Bordman said icily:
"The problem of coolness and water and food is the same sort of problem.
In six months we could raise food--if we had power to condense
moisture. We've chemicals for hydroponics--if we could keep the plants
from roasting as they grew. Refrigeration and water and food are
practically another circular problem."
Aletha said tentatively:
"Mr. Bordman----"
He turned, annoyed. Aletha said almost apologetically:
"On Chagan there was a--you might call it a woman's coup given to a
woman I know. Her husband raises horses. He's mad about them. And they
live in a sort of home on caterwheels out on the plains--the llanos.
Sometimes they're months away from a settlement. And she loves ice cream
and refrigeration isn't too simple. But she has a Doctorate in Human
History. So she had her husband make an insulated tray on the roof of
their trailer and she makes her ice cream there."
Men looked at her. Her cousin said amusedly:
"That should rate some sort of technical-coup feather!"
"The Council gave her a brass pot--official," said Aletha. "Domestic
science achievement." To Bordman she explained: "Her husband put a tray
on the roof of their house, insulated from the heat of the house below.
During the day there's an insulated cover on top of it, insulating it
from the heat of the sun. At night she takes off the top cover and pours
her custard, thin, in the tray. Then she goes to bed. She has to get up
before daybreak to scrape it up, but by then the ice cream is frozen.
Even on a warm night." She looked from one to another. "I don't know
why. She said it was done in a place called Babylonia on Earth, many
thousands of years ago."
Bordman blinked. Then he said decisively:
"Damn! Who knows how much the ground-temperature drops here before
dawn?"
"I do," said Aletha's cousin, mildly. "The top-sand temperature falls
forty-odd degrees. Warmer underneath, of course. But the air here is
almost cool when the sun rises. Why?"
"Nights are cooler on all planets," said Bordman, "because every night
the dark side radiates heat to empty space. There'd be frost everywhere
every morning if the ground didn't store up heat during the day. If we
prevent daytime heat-storage--cover a patch of ground before dawn and
leave it covered all day--and uncover it all night while shielding it
from warm winds---- We've got refrigeration! The night sky is empty
space itself! Two hundred and eighty below zero!"
* * * * *
There was a murmur. Then argument. The foremen of the Xosa II
colony-preparation crew were strictly practical men, but they had the
habit of knowing why some things were practical. One does not do modern
steel construction in contempt of theory, nor handle modern mining tools
without knowing why as well as how they work. This proposal sounded like
something that was based on reason--that should work to some degree.
But how well? Anybody could guess that it should cool something at least
twice as much as the normal night temperature-drop. But somebody
produced a slipstick and began to juggle it expertly. He astonishedly
announced his results. Others questioned, and then verified it. Nobody
paid much attention to Bordman. But there was a hum of absorbed
discussion, in which Redfeather and Chuka were immediately included. By
calculation, it astoundingly appeared that if the air on Xosa II was
really as clear as the bright stars and deep day-sky color indicated,
every second night a total drop of one hundred and eighty degrees
temperature could be secured by radiation to interstellar space--if
there were no convection-currents, and they could be prevented by----
It was the convection-current problem which broke the assembly into
groups with different solutions. But it was Dr. Chuka who boomed at all
of them to try all three solutions and have them ready before daybreak,
so the assembly left the hulk, still disputing enthusiastically. But
somebody had recalled that there were dewponds in the one arid area on
Timbuk, and somebody else remembered that irrigation on Delmos III was
accomplished that same way. And they recalled how it was done----
Voices went away in the ovenlike night outside. Bordman grimaced, and
again said:
"Damn! Why didn't I think of that myself?"
"Because," said Aletha, smiling, "you aren't a Doctor of Human History
with a horse-raising husband and a fondness for ice cream. Even so, a
technician was needed to break down the problem here into really simple
terms." Then she said, "I think Bob Running Antelope might approve of
you, Mr. Bordman."
Bordman fumed to himself.
"Who's he? Just what does that whole comment mean?"
"I'll tell you," said Aletha, "when you've solved one or two more
problems."
Her cousin came back into the room. He said with gratification:
"Chuka can turn out silicone-wool insulation, he says. Plenty of
material, and he'll use a solar mirror to get the heat he needs. Plenty
of temperature to make silicones! How much area will we need to pull in
four thousand gallons of water a night?"
"How do I know?" demanded Bordman. "What's the moisture-content of the
air here, anyhow?" Then he said vexedly, "Tell me! Are you using
heat-exchangers to help cool the air you pump into the buildings, before
you use power to refrigerate it? It would save some power----"
The Indian project engineer said absorbedly:
"Let's get to work on this! I'm a steel man myself, but----"
They settled down. Aletha turned a page.
The _Warlock_ spun around the planet. The members of its crew withdrew
into themselves. In even two months of routine tedious voyaging to this
planet, there had been the beginnings of irritation with the mannerisms
of other men. Now there would be years of it. At the beginning, every
man tended to become a hermit so that he could postpone as long as
possible the time when he would hate his shipmates. Monotony was already
so familiar that its continuance was a foreknown evil. The crew of the
_Warlock_ already knew how intolerable they would presently be to each
other, and the foreknowledge tended to make them intolerable now.
Within two days of its establishment in orbit, the _Warlock_ was manned
by men already morbidly resentful of fate; with the psychology of
prisoners doomed to close confinement for an indeterminate but ghastly
period. On the third day there was a second fist fight. A bitter one.
Fist fights are not healthy symptoms in a spaceship which cannot hope to
make port for a matter of years.
* * * * *
Most human problems are circular and fall apart when a single trivial
part of them is solved. There used to be enmity between races because
they were different, and they tended to be different because they were
enemies, so there was enmity--The big problem of interstellar flight was
that nothing could travel faster than light, and nothing could travel
faster than light because mass increased with speed, and mass increased
with speed--obviously!--because ships remained in the same time-slot,
and ships remained in the same time-slot long after a one-second shift
was possible because nobody realized that it meant traveling faster than
light. And even before there was interstellar travel, there was
practically no interplanetary commerce because it took so much fuel to
take off and land. And it took more fuel to carry the fuel to take off
and land, and more still to carry the fuel for that, until somebody used
power on the ground for heave-off instead of take-off, and again on the
ground for landing. And then interplanetary ships carried cargoes. And
on Xosa II there was an emergency because a sandstorm had buried the
almost completed landing grid under some megatons of sand, and it
couldn't be completed because there was only storage power because it
wasn't completed, because there was only storage power because----
But it took three weeks for the problem to be seen as the ultimately
simple thing it really was. Bordman had called it a circular problem,
but he hadn't seen its true circularity. It was actually--like all
circular problems--inherently an unstable set of conditions. It began to
fall apart when he saw that mere refrigeration would break its solidity.
In one week there were ten acres of desert covered with
silicone-wool-felt in great strips. By day a reflective surface was
uppermost, and at sundown caterwheel trucks hooked on to towlines and
neatly pulled it over on its back, to expose gridded black-body surfaces
to the starlight. And the gridding was precisely designed so that winds
blowing across it did not make eddies in the grid-squares, and the
chilled air in those pockets remained undisturbed and there was no
conduction of heat downward by eddy currents, while there was admirable
radiation of heat out to space. And this was in the manner of the night
sides of all planets, only somewhat more efficient.
* * * * *
In two weeks there was a water yield of three thousand gallons per
night, and in three weeks more there were similar grids over the colony
houses and a vast roofed cooling-shed for pre-chilling of air to be used
by the refrigeration systems themselves. The fuel-store--stored
power--was thereupon stretched to three times its former calculated
usefulness. The situation was no longer a simple and neat equation of
despair.