Hardwick shrugged.
"The wind's good and strong, now," he observed. "Let's find out. You've
got the starting system all set?"
Sandringham waved his hand. There was a high-voltage battery set.
It was of a type designed for blasting on airless planets, but that
did not matter. Its cables led snakily for a couple of hundred feet
to a very small pile of grayish soil which had been taken out of a
bore-hole. They went over that untidy heap and down into the ground.
Hardwick took hold of the firing-handle. He paused.
"How about highways?" he asked. "There might be some steam out of this
hole."
"All allowed for," said Sandringham. "Go ahead."
There was a gust of wind strong enough to knock a man down. There
was a humming sound in the air, as storm-wind beat upon the
four-thousand-foot cliff and poured over its top. There were gradually
rising waves, below. The sky was gray. The sea was slate-colored. Far,
far to windward, the white line of pouring rain upon the water came
marching toward the island.
Hardwick pumped the firing-handle.
There was a pause, while wind-gusts tore at his garments and staggered
him where he stood. It was quite a long pause.
Then a white vapor came seeping out of the bore-hole. It was perfectly
white. Then it came out with a sudden burst which was not in any sense
explosive, but was merely a vast rushing of vaporized water. Then, a
hundred yards away, there was a mistiness on the grassy surface. Still
farther, a crack in the surface-soil let out a curtain of white vapor.
Here and there, everywhere, little gouts of steam poured into the air
and tumbled in the storm-wind. It was notable that the steam did not
come out as an invisible vapor, and condense in midair. It poured out
of the ground in clouds, already condensed but thrust out by more
masses of vapor behind it. It was not super-heated steam that came out.
It was simply steam. Harmless steam, like the steam out of the spouts
of tea kettles. But it rose from individual places everywhere. It made
a massy coating of vapor which the storm-wind blew away. In seconds a
half-mile of soil was venting steam; in seconds more a mile. The thick,
fleecy vapor swept across the landscape. The storm-wind could only
tumble it and sweep it away.
In minutes there was no part of the island to be seen at all, save only
the thin line of the cliffs reaching away between dark water on the one
hand and snow-white clouds of vapor on the other.
"It can't scald anybody, can it?" asked Barnes uneasily.
"Not," said Hardwick, "when it's had to come up through forty feet
of soil. It's been pretty well cooled off in taking up some extra
moisture. It spread pretty well, didn't it?"
* * * * *
The Sector Chief's office had tall windows--doors, really--that looked
out upon green lawn and many trees. Now a downpour of rain beat down
outside. Wind whipped at the trees. There was tumult and roaring and
the vibration of gusts of hurricane force. Even the building in which
the Sector Chief's office was, vibrated slightly in the wind.
The Sector Chief beamed. The brown dog came in uneasily, looked around
the room, and walked in leisurely fashion toward Hardwick. He settled
with a sigh beside Hardwick's chair.
"What I want to know," said Werner tensely, "is, won't this rain put
back all the water the ship-fuel boiled away?"
Hardwick said uncomfortably: "Two inches of rain would be a heavy
fall, Sandringham tells me. It's the lack of heavy rains that made
the civilians start irrigating. When you figure the energy-content of
ship-fuel, Werner--an appreciable fraction of the energy in atomic
explosive--it's sort of deceptive. Turn it into thermal units and it
gets to be enlightening. We turned loose, underground, enough heat to
boil away two feet of soil-water under the island's whole surface."
Werner said sharply:
"What'll happen when that heat passes up through the soil? It'll kill
the vegetation, won't it?"
"No," said Hardwick mildly. "Because there _was_ two feet of water to
be turned to steam. The bottom layer of the soil was raised to the
temperature of steam at a few pounds pressure. No more. The heat's
already escaped. In the steam."
The phone-plate lighted. Sandringham snapped it on. A voice made a
report in a highly official voice.
"Right!" said Sandringham. The highly official voice spoke again.
"Right!" said Sandringham again. "You may tell the ships in orbit that
they can come down now, if they don't mind getting wet." He turned.
"Did you hear that, Hardwick? They have bored new cores. There are a
few soggy spots, but the ground's as firm, all over the island, as it
was when the Survey first came here. A very good job, Hardwick! A very
good job!"
Hardwick flushed. He reached down and patted the head of the brown dog.
"Look!" said the Sector Chief. "My dog, there, has taken a liking to
you. Will you accept him as a present, Hardwick?"
Hardwick grinned.
* * * * *
Young Barnes made ready to rejoin his ship. He was very strictly
Service, very stiffly at attention. Hardwick shook hands with him.
"Nice to have had you around, lieutenant," he said warmly. "You're a
very promising young officer. Sandringham knows it and has made a note
of the fact. Which I suspect is going to put you to a lot of trouble.
There's a devilish shortage of promising young officers. He'll give you
hellish jobs to do, because he has an idea you'll do them."
"I'll try, sir," said young Barnes formally. Then he said awkwardly,
"May I say something, sir? I'm very proud, sir, to have worked with
you. But dammit, sir, it seems to me that something more than just
saying thank you was due you! The Service, sir, ought to--"
Hardwick regarded the young man approvingly.
"When I was your age," he said, "I'd the very same attitude. But I had
the only reward the Service or anything else could give me. The job
got done. It's the only reward you can expect in the Service, Barnes.
You'll never get any other."
Young Barnes looked rebellious. He shook hands again.
"Besides," said Hardwick, "there is no better."
Young Barnes marched back toward his ship in the great metal
crisscross of girders which was the landing-grid.
Hardwick absently patted his dog. He headed back toward Sandringham's
office for his orders to return to his own work.