of sand--tawny sand, heavily mineralized. There was a dune here. Not a
big one for Xosa II, no more than a hundred feet high. But they went
up its leeward, steeply slanting side. All the planet seemed to tilt
insanely as the caterwheels spun. They reached the dune's crest, where
it tended to curl over and break like a water-comber, and here the
wheels struggled with sand precariously ready to fall, and Bordman had
a sudden perception of the sands of Xosa II as the oceans that they
really were. The dunes were waves which moved with infinite slowness,
but the irresistible force of storm-seas. Nothing could resist them.
Nothing!
They traveled over similar dunes for two miles. Then they began to
climb the approaches to the mountains. And Bordman saw for the second
time--the first had been through the ports of the landing-boat--where
there was a notch in the mountain wall and sand had flowed out of it
like a waterfall, making a beautifully symmetrical cone-shaped heap
against the lower cliffs. There were many such falls. In one place
there was a sand-cascade. Sand had poured over a series of rocky steps,
piling up on each in turn to its very edge, and then spilling again to
the next.
They went up a crazily slanting spur of stone, whose sides were too
steep for sand to lodge on, and whose narrow crest had a bare thin
coating of powder.
The landscape looked like a nightmare. As the car went on, wobbling and
lurching and dipping, the heights on either side made Bordman tend to
dizziness. The coloring was impossible. The aridness, the dessication,
the lifelessness of everything about was somehow shocking. Bordman
found himself straining his eyes for the merest, scrubbiest of bushes
and for however stunted and isolated a wisp of grass.
The journey went on for an hour. Then there came a straining climb up
a now-windswept ridge of eroded rock, and then the attainment of its
highest point--and then the ground car went onward for a hundred yards
and stopped.
They had reached the top of the mountain range, and there was
doubtlessly another range beyond. But they could not see it. Here, as
the place to which they had climbed so effortfully, there were no more
rocks. There was no valley. There was no descending slope. There was
sand. This was one of the sand-plateaus which were a unique feature of
Xosa II. And Bordman knew, now, that the disputed explanation was the
true one.
Winds, blowing over the mountains, carried sand as on other worlds they
carried moisture and pollen and seeds and rain. Where two mountain
ranges ran across the course of long-blowing winds, the winds eddied
above the valley between. They dropped sand into it. The equivalent of
trade winds, Bordman considered, in time would fill a valley to the
mountain tops, just as trade winds provide moisture in equal quantity
on other worlds, and civilizations have been built upon them. But--
"Well?" said Bordman challengingly.
"This is the site of the landing-grid," said Redfeather.
"Where?"
"Here," said the Indian. "A few months ago there was a valley here. The
landing-grid had eighteen hundred feet of height built. There was to
be four hundred feet more--the lighter top construction justifies my
figure of eighty per cent completion. Then there was a storm."
It was hot. Horribly, terribly hot, even here on a plateau at mountain
top height. Dr. Chuka looked at Bordman's face and bent down in the
vehicle. He turned a stopcock on one of the air tanks brought for
Bordman's needs. Immediately Bordman felt cooler. His skin was dry, of
course; the circulated air dried sweat as fast as it appeared. But he
had the dazed, feverish feeling of a man in an artificial fever box.
He'd been fighting it for some time. Now the coolness of the expanded
air was almost deliriously refreshing.
Dr. Chuka produced a canteen. Bordman drank thirstily. The water was
slightly salted to replace salt lost in sweat.
"A storm, eh?" asked Bordman, after a time of contemplation of his
inner sensations as well as the scene of disaster before him. There'd
be some hundreds of millions of tons of sand in even a section of
this plateau. It was unthinkable that it could be removed except by a
long-time sweep of changed trade winds along the length of the valley.
"But what has a storm to do--?"
"It was a sandstorm," said Redfeather curtly. "Probably there was a
sunspot flareup. We don't know. But the pre-colonization survey spoke
of sandstorms. The survey-team even made estimates of sandfall in
various places as so many inches per year. Here all storms drop sand
instead of rain. But there must have been a sunspot flare because
this storm blew for--" his voice went flat and deliberate because
it was stating the unbelievable--"this storm blew for two months. We
did not see the sun in all that time. And we couldn't work, naturally.
So we waited it out. When it ended, there was this sand-plateau where
the survey had ordered the landing-grid to be built. The grid was
under it. It is still under it. The top of eighteen hundred feet
of steel is buried two hundred feet down in the sand you see. Our
unfabricated building-steel is piled ready for erection--under two
thousand feet of sand. Without anything but stored power it is hardly
practical"--Redfeather's tone was sardonic--"for us to try to dig it
out. There are hundreds of millions of tons of stuff to be moved. If we
could get the sand away, we could finish the grid. If we could finish
the grid, we'd have power enough to get the sand away--in a few years,
and if we could replace the machinery that wore out handling it. And
if there wasn't another sandstorm."
He paused. Bordman took deep breaths of the cooler air. He could think
more clearly.
"If you will accept photographs," said Redfeather, "you can check that
we actually did the work."
Bordman saw the implications. The colony had been formed of Amerinds
for the steel work and Africans for the labor. The Amerinds were
congenitally averse to the handling of complex mining-machinery
underground and the control of modern high speed smelting operations.
Both races could endure this climate and work in it, provided that they
had cooled sleeping-quarters. But they had to have power. Power not
only to work with, but to live by. The air cooling machinery that made
sleep possible also condensed from the cool air that minute trace of
water-vapor it contained and that they needed for drink. But without
power they would thirst. Without the landing-grid and the power it took
from the ionosphere, they could not receive supplies from the rest of
the universe. So they would starve.
Bordman said:
"I'll accept the photographs. I even accept the statement that the
colony will die. I will prepare my report for the cache Aletha tells me
you're preparing. And I apologize for any affront I may have offered
you."
Dr. Chuka nodded. He regarded Bordman with benign warmth. Ralph
Redfeather said cordially enough:
"That's perfectly all right. No harm done."
"And now," said Bordman, "since I have authority to give any 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!"
* * * * *
A fist-fight broke out in the crew's quarters within two hours after
the _Warlock_ had established its orbit--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.
* * * * *
It 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 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, and 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. Men had been lost in sudden sand squalls,
and heroic searches made for them, and once or twice rescues. There had
been cave-ins in the mines, and other accidents.
Bordman went to the door of the hull which was Ralph Redfeather's
office. He opened it, and 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 even at night, here! Perhaps he could endure the outside
near dawn, but he raged a little. Here Amerinds and Africans lived
and throve, but 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. "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. Eventually a report of non-communication
would be made to the Colonial 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 non-communication
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. "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:
"I can order you sent on board, and your cousin will carry out the
order."
"I doubt it very much," said Aletha.
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!
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'chka 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--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--"I have to leave a
report 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, "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 also. 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, "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 sand-proof. 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 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:
"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
bad temper.
"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, "but I still 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 prefabricated tepee, 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, 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:
"Damn! Who knows how much the ground temperature drops here before
dawn?"
"I do," said Aletha's cousin. "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 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. He announced
his results. Others questioned, and then verified it. Nobody paid much
attention to Bordman. But there was a hum of discussion, in which
Redfeather and Chuka were immediately included. By calculation, it
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 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.
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 oven-like night outside. Bordman grimaced, and
again said:
"Darn! 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 problems 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: