II

Three hours after landing, Hardwick moved gingerly over grayish muddy

rock, with a four-thousand-foot sheer drop some twenty yards away. The

ragged edge of a cliff fell straight down for the better part of a

mile. Far below, the sea rippled gently. Hardwick saw a long, long line

of boats moving slowly out to sea. They towed something between them

which reached from boat to boat in exaggerated catenary curves. The

boats moved in line abreast straight out from the cliffs, towing this

floating, curved thing between them.

Hardwick regarded them for a moment and then inspected the grayish

mud underfoot. He lifted his eyes to the inland side of this peculiar

stretch of mountainside muddiness. There was a mast on the rock not far

away. It held up what looked like a vision-camera.

Young Barnes said:

"Excuse me, sir. What are those boats doing?"

"They're towing an oil-slick out to sea," said Hardwick absently, "by

towing a floating line of some sort between them. There isn't enough

oil to maintain the slick, and it's blown landward. So they tow it out

to sea again. It holds down the seas. Every time, of course, they lose

some of it."

"But--"

"There are trade winds," said Hardwick, not looking to seaward at

all. "They always blow in the same direction, nearly. They blow

three-quarters of the way around the planet, and they build up seas as

they blow. Normally, the swells that pound against this cliff, here,

will be a hundred feet and more from crest to crest. They'll throw

spray ten times that high, of course, and once when I was here before,

spray came over the cliff-top. The impacts of the waves are--heavy. In

a storm, if you put your ear to the ground on the leeward shore, you

can hear the waves smash against these cliffs. It's vibration."

Barnes looked uneasily at the cliff's edge and the line of boats

pushing sturdily over an ocean whose waves seemed less than ripples

from nearly a mile above them. But the line of boats was incredibly

long. It was twenty miles in length at the least, and between each two

boats there was the long curved line of something being towed on the

surface.

"The ... slick holds down the waves," Barnes guessed. "It ... works

best in deep water, I believe. The ancients knew it. Oil on the

waters." He considered. "Working hard to prevent vibrations! Are they

really so dangerous, sir?"

Hardwick nodded inland. And, at a quarter-mile from the edge of the

cliff there was a peculiar, broken, riven rampart of soil. It might

have been forty feet high, once. Now it was shattered and cracked. It

had the quite incredible look of having been pulled away from where

Hardwick stood, and of having partly disintegrated as it was withdrawn.

There were vertical breaks in its edges. There were broken-off masses

left behind. At one place a clump of perhaps a quarter-acre had not

followed the rest, and trees leaned drunkenly from its top, and at the

edge had fallen outward. And all along the top of the stone cliff for

as far as the eye could see there was this singular retreat of soil and

vegetation from the cliff's edge.

Hardwick stooped and picked up a bit of the mud underfoot. He rubbed it

between his fingers. It yielded like modeling clay. He dipped a finger

into a gray, greasy-seeming puddle. He looked at the thick liquid on

his finger and then rubbed it against his other palm. Young Barnes

duplicated this last action.

"It ... feels soapy, sir!" he said blankly. "Like ... wet soap!"

"Yes," said Hardwick. "That's the first problem here."

He turned to a ground-service Survey private. He jerked his head along

the coast line.

"How much have other places slipped?"

"Anywhere from this much, sir," said the private, "to two miles and

upward. There's one place where it's moving at a regular rate. Four

inches an hour, sir. It was three-and-a-half yesterday."

Hardwick nodded.

"Hm-m-m. We'll go back to Headquarters. Nasty business!"

* * * * *

He plodded over the extraordinarily messy footing toward the vehicle

which had brought him here. It was not an ordinary ground-car. Instead

of tires or caterwheels, it rolled upon flaccid, partly-inflated

five-foot rollers. They would be completely unaffected by roughness or

slipperiness of terrain, and if the vehicle fell overboard it would

float. But it was thickly coated with the gray mud of this cliff-top.

As he moved along, Hardwick was able to see the pattern of the rock

underneath the mud. It was curiously contorted, like something that had

curdled rather than cooled. And, as a matter of fact, it was believed

to have solidified slowly under water at such monstrous pressure

that even molten rock could not make it burst into steam. But it was

above-water now.

Hardwick climbed into the vehicle, and Barnes followed him. The

bolster-truck turned. It moved toward the broken barrier of earth.

Its five-foot flabby rollers seemed rather to flow over than to

surmount obstacles. Great lumps of drier dirt dented them and did not

disintegrate. There were no stones.

Hardwick frowned to himself. The bolster-truck more or less flowed up

the crumbling, inexplicably drawing-back mass of soil. Atop it, things

looked almost normal. Almost. There was a highway leading away from the

cliff. At first glance it seemed perfect. But it was cracked down the

middle for a hundred yards, and then the crack meandered off to the

side and was gone. There was a great tree, which leaned drunkenly. A

mile along the roadway its surface buckled as if something had pressed

irresistibly upward from below. The truck rolled over the break.

It was notable that the motion of the truck was utterly smooth. It

made no vibration at all. But even so it slowed before it moved through

a place where houses--dwellings and a shop or two--clustered closely

together on each side of the road.

There were people in and about the houses, but they were doing nothing

at all. Some of them stared hostilely at the Survey truck. Some

others deliberately turned their backs to it. There were vehicles

out of shelter and ready to be used, but none was moving. All--very

oddly--were pointed in the direction from which the bolster-truck had

come.

The truck went on. Presently the extraordinary flatness of the

landscape became apparent. It was possible to see a seemingly

illimitable distance. The ocean forty miles away showed as a thread

of blue beneath the horizon. The island was an almost perfectly plane

surface. But the windward side was tilted up to a height of four

thousand feet above the sea, and the downwind side slipped gently

beneath the waves. There was no hill visible anywhere. No mountains. No

valleys save the extremely minor gullies worn by rain. Even they had

been filled in, or dammed, and tied in to irrigation systems.

There was a place where there was a row of trees along such a

water-course. Half the row was fallen, and a part of the rest was

tilted. The remainder stood upright and firm. All the vegetation was

perfectly familiar. Most colonies have some vegetation, at least,

directly descended from the mother planet Earth. But this island on

Canna III had been above-water perhaps no more than three or four

thousand years. There had been no time for local vegetation to develop.

When the Survey took it over, there was only tidal seaweed, only one

variety of which had been able to extend itself in web-like fashion

over the soil above water. Terrestrial plants had wiped it out, and

everything was green, and everything was human-introduced.

But there was something wrong with the ground. At this place the top of

the soil bulged, and tall corn-plants grew extravagantly in different

directions. There, there was a narrow, lipless gap in the ground's

surface. An irrigation-ditch poured water into it. It was not filled.

* * * * *

Barnes said distressedly:

"Excuse me, sir, but how the devil did this happen?"

"There's been irrigation," said Hardwick patiently. "The soil here was

all ocean-bottom, once--it used to be what is called globigerinous

ooze. There's no sand. There are no stones. There's only bedrock and

formerly abyssal mud. And--some of it underneath is no longer former.

It's globigerinous ooze again."

He waved his hand at the landscape. It had been remarkably tidy, once.

Every square foot of ground had been cultivated. The highways were of

limited width, and the houses were neat and trim. It was, perhaps, the

most completely civilized landscape in the galaxy. But Hardwick added:

"You said the stuff felt like soap. In a way it's acting like soap. It

lies on slightly slanting, effectively smooth rock, like a soap-cake on

a slightly slanting sheet of metal. And that's the trouble. So long as

a cake of soap is dry on the bottom it doesn't move. Even if you pour

water on top, like rain, the top will wet, and the water will flow off,

but the bottom won't wet until all the soap is dissolved away. While

that was the process here, everything was all right. But they've been

irrigating."

They passed a row of neat cottages facing the road. One had collapsed

completely. The others looked absolutely normal. The bolster-truck went

on.

Hardwick said, frowning:

"They wanted the water to go into the soil. So they arranged it. A

little of that did no harm. Plants growing dried it out again. One tree

evaporates thousands of gallons a day in a good trade wind. There were

some landslides in the early days, especially when storm-swells pounded

the cliffs, but on the whole the ground was more firmly anchored when

first cultivated than it had been before the colonists came."

"But--irrigation? The sea's not fresh, is it?"

"Water-freshening plants," said Hardwick dryly. "Ion-exchange systems.

They installed them and had all the fresh water they could wish for.

And they wished for a lot. They deep-plowed, so the water would sink

in. They dammed the water-courses--and it sank in. What they did

amounted to something like boring holes in the cake of soap I used for

an illustration just now. Water went right down to the bottom. What

would happen then?"

Barnes said:

"Why ... the bottom would wet ... and slide! As if it were greased!"

"Not greased," corrected Hardwick. "Soaped. Soap is viscous. That

is different--and a lucky difference! But the least vibration would

encourage movement. And it does. It has. So the population is now

walking on eggs. Worse, it's walking on the equivalent of a cake of

soap which is getting wetter and wetter on the bottom. It's already

sliding as a viscous substance does--reluctantly. But in spite of the

oil-slick they're trying to keep in place upwind there's still some

battering from the sea. There are still some vibrations in the bedrock.

And so there's a slow, and gentle, and gradual sliding."

"And they figure," said Barnes abruptly, "that locking onto a ship

with the landing-grid might be like an earthquake." He stopped. "An

earthquake, now--"

"Not much vulcanism on this planet," Hardwick told him. "But of course

there are tectonic quakes occasionally. They made this island."

Barnes said uneasily:

"I don't think, sir, that I'd sleep well if I lived here."

"You are living here for the moment. But at your age I think you'll

sleep."

The bolster-truck turned, following the highway. The road was very

even, and the motion of the truck along it was infinitely smooth. Its

lack of vibration explained why it was permitted to move when all

other vehicles were stopped. But Hardwick reflected uneasily that

this did not account for the orders of the Sector Chief forbidding

the rocket-landing of a ship's boat. It was true enough that the

living-surface of the island rested upon slanting stone, and that if

the bottom were wet enough it could slide off into the sea. It already

had moved. At least one place was moving at four inches per hour. But

that was viscous flow. It would be enhanced by vibration, and assuredly

the hammering of seas upon the windward cliff should be lessened by any

possible means.

But it did not mean that the sound of a rocket-landing would be

disastrous, nor that the straining of a landing-grid as it stopped a

space-ship in orbit and drew it to ground should produce a landslide.

There was something else--though the situation for the island's

civilian population was assuredly serious enough. If any really

massive movement of the ground did begin, viscous or any other; if any

considerable part of the island's surface did begin to move--all of it

would go. And the population would go with it. If there were survivors,

they could be numbered in dozens.

The tall tamped-earth wall of the Headquarters reserve area loomed

ahead. Sector Headquarters had been established here when there were

no other inhabitants. Seeds had been broadcast and trees planted while

the survey buildings were under construction. Headquarters, in fact,

had been built upon an uninhabited planet. But colonists followed in

the wake of Survey personnel. Wives and children, and then storekeepers

and agriculturists, and presently civilian technicians and ultimately

even politicians arrived as the non-Service population grew. Now Sector

Headquarters was resented because it occupied one fourth of the island.

It kept too much of the planet's useful surface out of civilian use.

And the island was now desperately overcrowded.

But it seemed also to be doomed.

As the bolster-truck moved silently toward Headquarters, a hundred-yard

section of the wall collapsed. There was an upsurging of dust. There

was a rumbling of falling, hardened wall. The truck's driver turned

white. A civilian beside the road faced the wall and wrung his

hands, and stood waiting to feel the ground under his feet begin to

sweep smoothly toward the here-distant sea. A post held up a traffic

signal some twenty yards from the gate. It leaned slowly. At a

forty-five-degree tilt it checked and hung stationary. Fifty yards from

the gate, a new crack appeared across the road.

But nothing more happened. Nothing. Yet one could not be sure that some

critical point had not been passed, so that from now on there would be

a gradual rise in the creeping of the soil toward the ocean.

Barnes caught his breath.

"That--makes one feel queer," he said unsteadily. "A ... shock like

that wall falling could start everything off!"

Hardwick said nothing at all. It had occurred to him that there was

no irrigation of the Survey area. He frowned very thoughtfully--even

worriedly, as the truck went inside the Headquarters gate and

rolled smoothly on over a winding road through definitely parklike

surroundings.

* * * * *

It stopped before the building which was the Sector Chief's own

headquarters in Headquarters. A large brown dog dozed peacefully on the

plastic-tiled landing at the top of half a dozen steps. When Hardwick

got out of the truck the dog got up with a leisurely air. When Hardwick

ascended the steps, with Barnes following him, the dog came forward

with a sort of stately courtesy to do the honors. Hardwick said:

"Nice dog, that."

He went inside. The dog sedately followed. The interior of the building

was singularly empty. There was a sort of resonant silence until

somewhere a telewriter began to click.

"Come along," said Hardwick. "The Sector Chief's office is over this

way."

Young Barnes followed uncomfortably.

"It seems odd there's no one around. No secretaries, no sentries,

nobody at all."

"Why should there be?" asked Hardwick in surprise. "The guards at the

gate keep civilians out. And nobody in the Service will bother the

Chief without reason. At least, not more than once!"

But across a glistening, empty floor there ran an ominous crack.

They went down a corridor. Voices sounded, and Hardwick tracked

them, with the paws of the dog clicking on the floor behind him. He

led the way into a spacious, comfortably nondescript room with high

windows--doors, really--that opened on green lawn outside. The Sector

Chief, Sandringham, leaned placidly back in a chair, smoking. Werner,

the other summoned Senior Officer, sat bolt upright in a chair facing

him. Sandringham waved a hand cordially to Hardwick.

"Back so soon? You're ahead of schedule on all counts! Here's Werner,

back from looking at the fuel-store situation."

Hardwick suddenly looked as if he'd been jolted. But he nodded, and

Werner tried to smile and failed. He was completely white.

"My pilot from the ship, who's kept aground," said Hardwick.

"Lieutenant Barnes. Very promising young officer. Cut my landing-time

by hours. Lieutenant, this is Sector Chief Sandringham and Mr. Werner."

"Have a seat, Hardwick," grunted the Chief. "You, too, lieutenant. How

does it look up on the cliff, Hardwick?"

"I suspect you know as well as I do," said Hardwick. "I think I saw a

vision-camera planted up there."

"True enough. But there's nothing like on-the-spot inspection. Now

you're back, how does it look to you?"

"Inadequate," said Hardwick with some dryness. "Inadequate to explain

some things I've noticed. But it's a very bad situation. Its degree of

badness depends on the viscosity of the mud at bedrock all over the

island. The left-behind mud's like pea soup. It looks really bad! But

what's the viscosity at bedrock with soil pressing down--and I hope

drier soil than at the bottom?"

Sandringham grunted.

"Good question. I sent for you, Hardwick, when it began to look bad,

before the ground really started sliding. When I thought it might begin

any time. The viscosity averages pretty closely at three times ten to

the sixth. Which still gives us some leeway. But not enough."

"Not nearly enough!" said Hardwick impatiently. "Irrigation should have

been stopped a long while back!"

The Sector Chief grimaced.

"I've no authority over civilians. They've their own planetary

government. And do you remember?" He quoted: "'Civilian establishments

and governments may be advised by Colonial Survey officials, and may

make requests of them, but in each case such advice or request is to be

considered on its own merits only, and in no case can it be the subject

of a _quid-pro-quo_ agreement.'" He added grimly: "That means you

can't threaten. It's been thrown at my head every time I've asked them

to cut down their irrigation in the past fifteen years! I advised them

not to irrigate at all, and they couldn't see it. It would increase the

food-supply, and they needed more food. So they went ahead. They built

two new sea-water freshening plants only last year!"

Werner licked his lips. He said in a voice that was higher-pitched than

Hardwick remembered:

"What's happening serves them right! It serves them right!"

Hardwick waited.

* * * * *

"Now," said Sandringham, "they are demanding to be let into Sector

Headquarters for safety. They say we haven't irrigated, so the ground

we occupy isn't going to slide. They demand that we take them all in

here to sit on their rumps until the rest of the island slides into the

sea or doesn't. If it doesn't, they want to wait here until the soil

becomes stable again because they've quit irrigating."

"It'd serve them right if we let them in!" cried Werner in shrill

anger. "It's their fault that they're in this fix!"

Sandringham waved his hand.

"Administering abstract justice isn't my job. I imagine it's handled in

more competent quarters. I have only to meet the objective situation.

Which"--he paused--"is plenty! Hardwick, you've handled swamp-planet

situations. What can be done to stop the sliding of the island's soil

before it all goes overboard?"

"Not much, offhand," said Hardwick. "Give me time and I'll manage

something. But a really bad storm, with high seas and plenty of rain,

might wipe out the whole civilian colony. That viscosity figure is

close to hopeless--if not quite."

The Sector Chief looked impassive.

"How much time does he have, Werner?"

"None!" said Werner shrilly. "The only possible thing is to try to move

as many people as possible to the solid ground in the Arctic! The boats

can be crowded--the situation demands it! And if the two space-craft in

orbit are sent to collect a fleet, and as many people as possible are

moved at once--there may be some survivors!"

Hardwick spread out his hands.

"I'm wondering," he observed, "what the really serious problem is.

There's more than sliding soil the matter! Else you would ... I'm sure

Lieutenant Barnes has thought of this ... let the civilian population

into Headquarters to sit on its rump and wait for better times."

Sandringham glanced at young Barnes, who flushed hotly at being noticed.

"I'm sure you have good reasons, sir," he said embarrassedly.

"I have several," said the Sector Chief dryly. "For one thing, so long

as we refuse to let them in, they're reassured. They can't imagine we'd

let them down. But if we invited them in they'd panic and fight to get

in first. There'd be a full-scale slaughter right there! They'd be sure

disaster was only minutes off. Which it would be!"

He paused and glanced from one to the other of the senior officers.

"When I sent for you," he said wryly, "I meant for you, Hardwick, to

take care of the possible sliding. I meant for Werner, here, to do the

public-relations job of scaring the civilians just enough to make them

let it be done. It's not so simple, now!"

He drew a deep breath.

"It's pure chance that there is a Sector Headquarters. Or else it's

Providence. We'll find that out later! But ten days ago it was

discovered that an instrument had gone wrong over in the ship-fuel

storage area. It didn't register when a tank leaked. And--a tank did

leak. You know ship-fuel's harmless when it's refrigerated. You know

what it's like when it's not. Dissolved in soil-moisture, it's not only

catalyzed to explosive condition, but it's a hell of a corrosive, and

it's eaten holes in some other tanks--and can you imagine trying to do

anything about that?"

Hardwick felt a sensation of incredulous shock. Werner wrung his hands.

"If I could only find the man who made that faulty tank!" he said

thickly. "He's killed all of us! All! Unless we get to solid ground in

the Arctic!"

The Sector Chief said calmly:

"That's why I won't let them in, Hardwick. Our storage tanks go down

to bedrock. The leaked fuel--warmed up, now--is seeping along bedrock

and eating at other tanks, besides being absorbed generally by the soil

and dissolving in the ground-water. We've pulled all personnel out of

all the area it could have seeped down to."

Hardwick felt slightly cold at the back of his neck.

"I suspect," he said wryly, "that they came out on tiptoe, holding

their breaths, and that they were careful not to drop anything or

scrape their chairs when they got up to leave. I would have! Anything,

of course, could set it off. But it is bound to go anyhow! Of course!

Now I see why we couldn't make a rocket-landing!"

* * * * *

The chilly feeling seemed to spread as he realized more fully. When

ship-fuel is refrigerated during its manufacture, it is about as safe

a substance as can be imagined--so long as it is kept refrigerated.

It is an energy-chemical compound, of atoms bound together with

forced-valence linkages. But enormous amounts of energy are required to

force valences upon reluctant atoms.

When ship-fuel warms up, or is catalyzed, it goes on one step beyond

the process of its manufacture. It goes on to the modification the

refrigeration prevented. It changes its molecular configuration. What

was stable because it was cold becomes something which is hysterically

unstable because of its structure. The touch of a feather can

detonate it. A shout can set it off.

It is, indeed, burned only molecule by molecule in a ship's engines,

being catalyzed to the unstable state while cold at the very spot where

it is to detonate. And since the energy yielded by detonation is that

of the forced bonds ... why ... the energy-content of ship-fuel is much

greater than a merely chemical compound can contain. Ship-fuel contains

a measurable fraction of the power of atomic explosive. But it is much

more practical for use on board ship.

The point now was, of course, that leaked into the ground and

warmed ... why ... practically any vibratory motion will detonate it.

Even dissolved, it can detonate because it is not a chemical but an

energy-release action.

"A good, drumming, heavy rain," said Sandringham very calmly indeed,

"which falls on this end of the island, will undoubtedly set off some

scores of tons of leaked ship-fuel. And that ought to scatter and

catalyze and detonate the rest. The explosion should be equivalent

to at least a megaton fusion bomb." He paused, and added with irony,

"Pretty situation, isn't it? If the civilians hadn't irrigated, we

could evacuate Headquarters and let it blow--as it will anyhow. If the

fuel hadn't leaked, we could let in the civilians until the island's

soil decides what it's going to do. Either would be a nasty situation,

but the combination--"

Werner said shrilly:

"Evacuation to the Arctic is the only possible answer! Some people can

be saved! Some! I'll take a boat and equipment and go on ahead and get

some sort of refuge ready."

There was dead silence. The brown dog, who had followed Hardwick

from the outer terrace, now yawned loudly. Hardwick reached over and

absent-mindedly scratched his ears. Young Barnes swallowed.

"Beg pardon, sir," he said awkwardly. "But what's the weather forecast?"

"Continued fair," said Sandringham pleasantly. "That's why I had

Hardwick and Werner come down. Three heads are better than one. I've

gambled their lives on their brains."

Hardwick continued thoughtfully to scratch the brown dog's ears. Werner

licked his lips. Young Barnes looked from one to another of them. Then

he looked back at the Sector Chief.

"Sir," he said awkwardly. "I ... I think the odds are pretty good. Mr.

Hardwick, sir--He'll manage!"

Then he flushed hotly at his own presumption in saying something

consoling to a Sector Chief. It was comparable to telling him how to

top off his vacuum-suit tanks.

But the Sector Chief nodded in grave approval and turned to Hardwick to

hear what he had to say.