Therefore Senior Officer Werner, of the Colonial Survey, received his
instructions from Sandringham. Hardwick never knew the details of the
instructions Werner got. They were possibly persuasive, or they may
have been menacing. But Werner ceased to argue for the movement of any
fraction of the island's population to the arctic ice cap, and instead
made frequent eloquent addresses to the planetary population on the
scientific means by which their lives were to be saved. Between the
addresses, perhaps, he sweated cold sweat when a tree sedately tilted
in what had seemed solid soil, or a building settled perceptibly while
he looked at it, or when ... say ... a section of the island's soil
bulged upward.
Publicly, he headed citizens' committees, and grandly gave
instructions, and spoke in unintelligible and, therefore, extremely
scientific terms when desperately earnest men asked for explanations.
But he was perfectly clear in what he wanted them to do.
He wanted drill-holes in the arable soil down to the depth at which the
holes began to close up of themselves. He wanted those holes not more
than a hundred feet apart, in lines which slanted at forty-five degrees
to the gradient of the bedrock.
Sandringham checked his speeches, at the rate of four a day. Once he
had Hardwick called away from where he supervised extremely improbable
operations. Hardwick was smeared with the island's grayish mud when he
looked into the phone-plate to take the call.
"Hardwick," said Sandringham curtly, "Werner's saying those holes you
want are to be lines at forty-five degrees to the gradient."
"That ... I'd like a little more," said Hardwick. "A little less,
rather. If they slanted three miles across the grade for every two
downhill, it would be better. I'd like to put a lot more lines of
holes. But there's the element of time."
"I'll have him explain that he was misquoted," said Sandringham,
grimly. "Three across to two down. How close do you really want those
lines?"
"It's not how close," said Hardwick. "I've got to have them quickly.
How does the barometer look?"
"Down a tenth," said Sandringham.
Hardwick said:
"Damn! Has he got plenty of labor?"
"All the labor there is," said Sandringham. "And I'm having a road laid
along the cliffs for speed with the trucks. If I dared ... and if I had
the pipe ... I'd lay a pipe line."
"Later," said Hardwick tiredly. "If he's got labor to spare, set them
to work turning the irrigation systems hind part before. Make them
drainage systems. Use pumps. So if rain does come it won't be spread
out on the land by all the pretty ditches. So it will be gathered
instead and either flung back over the cliffs or else drained downhill
without getting a chance to sink into the ground. For the time being,
anyhow."
Sandringham said evenly:
"Has it occurred to you what a good, pounding rain would do to
Headquarters, and consequently to public confidence on this island, and
therefore to the attempt of anybody to do anything but wring his hands
because he was doomed?"
Hardwick grimaced.
"I'm irrigating, here. I've got a small-sized lake made, and an ice
coffer-dam, and the water-freshener is working around the clock. If
there is labor, tell 'em to fix the irrigation systems into drainage
layouts. That will cheer them, anyhow."
* * * * *
He was very weary, then. There is a certain exhausting quality in the
need to tell other men to do work which may cause them to be killed
spectacularly. The fact that one will certainly be killed with them
does not lessen the tension.
He went back to his work. And it definitely seemed to be as purposeless
as any man's work could possibly be. Down-grade from the now thoroughly
deserted area in which ship-fuel tanks had leaked--quite far
down-grade--he had commandeered all the refrigeration equipment in the
warehouses. Since refrigeration was necessary for fuel-storage, there
was a great deal. He had planted iron pipe in the soil, and circulated
refrigerant in it, and presently there was a wall of solidly frozen
earth which was shaped like a shallow U. It was a coffer-dam. In the
curved part of that U he'd siphoned out a lake. A peristaltic pump ran
sea water from the island's lee out upon the ground--where it instantly
turned to mud--and another peristaltic pump sucked the mud up again and
delivered it down-grade beyond the line of freezing-pipes. It was in
fact a system of hydraulic dredging such as is normally performed in
rivers and harbors. But when topsoil is merely former abyssal mud it
is an excellent way to move dirt. Also, it does not require anybody to
strike blows into soil which may be explosive when one has gotten down
near bedrock, and in particular there are no clanking machines.
But it was hair-raising.
In one day, though, he had a sizable lake pumped out. And he pumped it
out to emptiness, painstakingly smelling the water as it went down to a
greater depth below the previous ground surface. At the end of the day
he shivered and ordered pumping ended for the time.
But then he had the brine-pipe laid around a great circuit, to the
Headquarters ground which was upgrade from the now-deserted square
mile or so in which the fuel tanks lay deep in the soil. And here,
also, he performed excavation without the sound of hammer, shovel, or
pick. He thrust pipes into the ground, and they had nozzles at the end
which threw part of the water backward. So that when sea water poured
into them it thrust them deeper into the ground by the backward jet
action. Again the fact that the soil was abyssal mud made it possible.
The nozzles floated up much grayish mud, but they bored ahead down
to bedrock, and there they lay flat and tunneled to one side and the
other--the tunnels they made being full of water at all times.
From those tunnels, as they extended, an astonishing amount of sea
water seeped out into the soil near bedrock. But it was sea water. It
was heavily mineralized. And it is a peculiarity of sea water that
it is an electrolyte, and it is a property of electrolytes that they
coagulate colloids, and rather definitely discourage the suspension of
small solid particles which are on the borderline of being colloids. In
fact, the water of the ocean of Canna III turned the ground-soil into
good, honest mud which did not feel at all soapy, and through which it
percolated with a surprising readiness.
Young Barnes eagerly supervised this part of the operation, once it
was begun. He shamed the Survey personnel assigned to him into perhaps
excessive self-confidence.
"He knows what he's doing," he said firmly. "Look here! I'll take that
canteen. It's fresh water. Here's some soap. Wet it in fresh water and
it lathers. See? It dissolves. Now try to dissolve it in sea water!
Try it! See? They put salt in the boiled stuff to separate soap out,
when they make it!" He'd picked up that item from Hardwick. "Sea water
won't soften the ground. It can't! Come on, now, let's get another pipe
putting more salt water underground!"
His workmen did not understand what he was doing, but they labored
zestfully because it was mysterious and for a purpose. But downhill,
in the hydraulic-dredged-out lake, water came seeping in, in the form
of mud. And then another pipe came up from the seashore and the mud
settled solidly on the bottom, not dispersing. It was a rather small
pipe, and the personnel who laid it were bewildered. Because there was
a water-freshening plant down there on the shore, and all the fresh
water was poured back overboard, while the brine--saturated with salts
from the ocean: unable to dissolve a single grain of anything else--was
being used to fill the small artificial lake.
The second day Sandringham called Hardwick again, and again Hardwick
peered wearily into the phone-screen.
"Yes," said Hardwick, "the leaked fuel is turning up. In solution, I'm
trying to measure the concentration by matching specific gravities of
lake water and brine, and then sticking electrodes in each. The fuel's
corrosive as the devil. It gives a different EMF. Higher than brine of
the same density. I think I've got it in hand."
"Do you want to start shipping it?" demanded Sandringham.
"You can begin pouring it down holes," said Hardwick. "How's the
barometer?"
"Down three-tenths this morning. Steady now."
"Damn!" said Hardwick. "I'll set up molds. Freeze it in plastic bags
the size of the bore-holes so it will go down. While it's frozen they
can even push it down deep."
Sandringham said very grimly:
"There's been more damned technical work done with ship-fuel than any
other substance since time began. But remember that the stuff can still
be set off, even dissolved in water! Its sensitivity goes down, but
it's not gone!"
"If it were," said Hardwick drearily, "you could invite in the civilian
population to sit on its rump. I've got something like forty tons of
ship-fuel in brine solution in this lake I pumped out! But it's in
five thousand tons of brine. We don't speak above a whisper when we're
around it. We walk in carpet slippers and you never saw people so
polite! We will start freezing it."
"How can you handle it?" demanded Sandringham apprehensively.
"The brine freezes at minus thirty," said Hardwick. "In one per cent
solution it's only five per cent sensitive at minus nineteen. We're
handling it at minus nineteen. I think I'll step up the brine and chill
it a little more."
He waved a mud-smeared hand and went away.
* * * * *
That day, bolster-trucks began to roll out of Survey Headquarters.
They rolled very, very smoothly, and they trailed a fog of chilled air
behind them. And presently there were men with heavy gloves on their
hands taking long things like sausages out of the bolster-trucks and
untying the ends and lowering them down into holes bored in the topsoil
until they reached places where wetness made the holes close up again.
Then the men from Survey pushed those frozen sausages underground still
further by long poles with carefully padded--and refrigerated--ends.
And then they went on to other holes.
The first day there were five hundred such sausages thrust down into
holes in the ground, which holes to all intents and purposes closed up
behind them. The second day there were four thousand. The third day
there were eight. On the fourth the solution of ship-fuel in brine in
the lake did not give adequate EMF in the little battery-cell designed
to show how much corrosive substance there was in the brine. Hardwick
took samples from the fluid draining into the lake. It was not mud any
longer. Brine flowed at the top of bedrock, and it left the mud behind
it, because salt water remarkably hindered the suspension of former
globigerinous ooze particles. It was practically colloid. Salt water
practically coagulated it.
The brine flowing from the salt-water tunnels upwind showed no more
ship-fuel in it. Hardwick called Sandringham and told him.
"I can call in the civilians!" said Sandringham. "You've mopped up the
leaked stuff! It couldn't have been done--"
"Not anywhere but here, with bedrock handy just underneath, and
slanting," said Hardwick. "But I wouldn't advise it. Tell them they can
come if they want to. They'll sort of drift in. I want to tap some more
ship-fuel for the rest of those bore-holes. From the tanks that haven't
leaked."
Sandringham hesitated.
"Twenty thousand holes," said Hardwick tiredly. "Each one had a
six-hundred block of frozen saturated brine dumped in it, with roughly
one pound of ship-fuel in solution. You have gone that far. Might as
well go the rest of the way. How's the barometer?"
"Up a tenth," said Sandringham. "Still rising."
Hardwick blinked at him, because he had trouble keeping his eyes open
now.
"Let's ride it, Sandringham!"
Sandringham hesitated. Then he said:
"Go ahead."
Hardwick waved his arms at his associates, whom he admired with great
fervor in his then-foggy mind, because they were always ready to work
when it was needed, and it had not stopped being needed for five days
running. He explained very lucidly that there were only three more
miles of holes to be filled up, and therefore they would just draw so
much of ship-fuel and blend it carefully with an appropriate amount of
suitable chilled brine and then freeze it in appropriate sausages--
Young Lieutenant Barnes said gravely:
"Yes, sir. I'll take care of it. You remember me, sir! I'll take care
of it."
Hardwick said:
"Barometer's up a tenth." His eyes did not quite focus. "All right,
lieutenant. Go ahead. Promising young officer. Excellent. I'll sit down
here for just a moment."
When Barnes came back, Hardwick was asleep. And a last one hundred and
fifty frozen sausages of brine and ship-fuel went out of Headquarters
within a matter of hours, and then a vast quietude settled down
everywhere.
Young Barnes sat beside Hardwick, menacing anybody who even thought of
disturbing him. When Sandringham called for him. Barnes went to the
phone-plate.
"Sir," he said with vast formality. "Mr. Hardwick went five days
without sleep. His job's done. I won't wake him, sir!"
Sandringham raised his eyebrows.
"You won't?"
"I won't, sir!" said young Barnes.
Sandringham nodded.
"Fortunately," he observed, "nobody's listening. You are quite right."
He snapped the connection. And then young Barnes realized that he had
defied a Sector Chief, which is something distinctly more improper in
a junior officer than merely trying to instruct him in topping off his
vacuum-suit tanks.
* * * * *
Twelve hours later, however, Sandringham called for him.
"Barometer's dropping, lieutenant. I'm concerned. I'm issuing a notice
of the impending storm. Not everybody will crowd in on us, but a great
many will. I'm explaining that the chemicals put into the bottom soil
may not quite have finished their work. If Hardwick wakens, tell him."
"Yes, sir," said Barnes.
But he did not intend to wake Hardwick. Hardwick, however, woke of
himself at the end of twenty hours of sleep. He was stiff and sore
and his mouth tasted as if something had kittened in it. Fatigue can
produce a hangover, too.
"How's the barometer?" he asked when his eyes came open.
"Dropping, sir. Heavy winds, sir. The Sector Chief has opened the
Reserve Area, sir, to the civilians if they wish to come."
Hardwick computed dizzily on his fingers. A more complex instrument was
actually needed, of course. One does not calculate on one's fingers
just how long a one per cent solution of ship-fuel in frozen brine
has taken to melt, and how completely it has diffused through an
upside-down swamp with the pressure of forty feet of soil on top of it,
and therefore its effective concentration and dispersal underground.
"I think," said Hardwick, "it's all right. By the way, did they turn
the irrigation systems hind end to?"
Young Barnes did not know what this was all about. He had to send for
information. Meanwhile he solicitously plied Hardwick with coffee and
food. Hardwick grew reflective.
"Queer," he said. "You think of the damage forty tons of ship-fuel can
do. Setting off the rest of the store and all. But even by itself it
rates some thousands of tons of TNT. I wonder what TNT was, before it
became a ton-measure of energy? You think of it exploding in one place,
and it's appalling! But think of all that same amount of energy applied
to square miles of upside-down swamp. Hundreds or thousands of miles
of upside-down swamp. D'you know, lieutenant, on Soris II we pumped a
ship-fuel solution onto a swamp we wanted to drain? Flooded it, and let
it soak until a day came with a nice, strong, steady wind."
"Yes, sir," said Barnes respectfully.
"Then we detonated it. We didn't have a one per cent solution. It was
more like a thousandth of one per cent solution. Nobody's ever measured
the speed of propagation of an explosion in ship-fuel, dry. But it's
been measured in dilute solution. It isn't the speed of sound. It's
lower. It's purely a temperature-phenomenon. In water, at any dilution,
ship-fuel goes off just barely below the boiling-point of water.
It doesn't detonate from shock when it's diluted enough to be all
ionized--but that takes a hell of a lot of dilution. Have you got some
more coffee?"
"Yes, sir," said Barnes. "Coming up, sir."
"We floated ship-fuel solution over that swamp, Barnes, and let it
stand. It has a high diffusion-rate. It went down into the mud--And
there came a day when the wind was right. I dumped a red-hot iron
bar into the swamp water that had ship-fuel in solution. It was the
weirdest sight you ever saw!"
Barnes served him more coffee. And Hardwick sipped it, and it burned
his tongue.
"It went up in steam," he said. "The swamp water that had the ship-fuel
dissolved in it. It didn't explode, as a mass. They told me later that
it propagated at hundreds of feet per second only. They could see the
wall of steam go marching across the swamp. Not even high-pressure
steam. There was a _whoosh!_ and a cloud of steam half a mile high
that the wind carried away. And all the surface water in the swamp was
gone, and all the swamp-vegetation parboiled and dead. So"--he yawned
suddenly--"we had a ten-mile by fifty-mile stretch of arable ground
ready for the coming colonists."
He tried the coffee again. He added reflectively:
"That trick--it didn't explode the ship-fuel, in a way. It burned it.
In water. It applied the energy of the fuel to the boiling-away of
water. Powerful stuff! We got rid of two feet of water on an average,
counting what came out of the mud. It cost ... hm-m-m ... a fraction of
a gram per square yard."
He gulped the coffee down. There were men looking at him solicitously.
They seemed very glad to see him awake again. There was a monstrous
bank of cloud-stuff piling up in the sky. He suddenly blinked at that.
"Hello! How long did I sleep, Barnes?"
Barnes told him. Hardwick shook his head to clear it.
"We'll go see Sandringham," said Hardwick, heavily. "I'd like to
postpone firing as long as I can, short of having the stuff start
draining into the sea to leeward."
There were mud-stained men around the place where Hardwick had slept.
When he went--still groggy--out to the bolster-truck young Barnes had
waiting, they regarded Hardwick in a very satisfying manner. Somebody
grunted, "Good to've worked with you, sir,"--which is about as much of
admiration as anybody would want to hear expressed. These associates of
Hardwick in the mopping-up of leaked ship's fuel would be able to brag
of the job at all times and in all places hereafter.
Then the truck went trundling away in search of Sandringham.
* * * * *
It found him on the cliffs to the windward side of the island. The
sea was no longer a cerulean blue. It was slaty-color. There were
occasional flecks of white foam on the water four thousand feet below.
There were dark clouds, by then covering practically all the sky. Far
out to sea, there were small craft heading grimly for the ends of the
island, to go around it and ride out the coming storm in its lee.
Sandringham greeted Hardwick with relief. Werner stood close by,
opening and closing his hands jerkily.
"Hardwick!" said the Sector Chief cordially. "We're having a
disagreement, Werner and I. He's confident that the turning of the
irrigation systems hind end to--making them surface-drainage systems,
in effect--will take care of the whole situation. Adding the brine
underground, he thinks, will have done a good deal more. He says it'll
be bad, psychologically, for anything more to be done. He didn't speak
of it, and it would injure public confidence in the Survey."
Hardwick said curtly:
"The only thing that will make a permanent difference on this island
is for the water-fresheners to be a little less efficient. Barnes has
the figures. He computed them from some measurements I had him make. If
the water-freshener plants don't take all the sea-minerals out: if they
don't make the irrigation-water so infernally soft and suitable for
hair-washing and the like: if they turn out hard water for irrigation,
this won't happen again! But there's too much water underground now. We
have got to get it out, because a little more's going underground from
this storm, surface-drainage systems or no surface-drainage systems."
Sandringham pointed to leeward, where a black, thick procession of
human beings trooped toward the Survey area on foot and by every
possible type of vehicle.
"I've ordered them turned into the ship-sheds and warehouses," said
the Sector Chief. "But of course we haven't shelter for all of them.
At a guess, when they feel safe they'll go back to their homes even
through the storm."
The sky to windward grew blacker and blacker. There was no longer a
steady flow of wind coming over the cliff's edge. It came in gusts,
now, of extreme violence. They could make a man stagger on his feet.
There were more flecks of white on the ocean's surface.
"The boats," added Sandringham, "were licked. There simply wasn't
enough oil to maintain the slick. The radio reports were getting
hysterical before I ordered them told that we had it beaten on shore.
They're running for shelter now. I think they'd have stayed out there
trying to hold the slick in place with their towline, if I hadn't said
we had matters in hand."