of course. When he got his Senior rating he'd spent six months at
Headquarters learning procedures and practices proper to his increased
authority. There was one inhabitable island, two hundred miles long
and possibly forty wide. There was no other usable ground outside
the Arctic. The one occupied island had gigantic sheer cliffs on its
windward side, where a great slab of bed-rock had split along some
submarine fault and tilted upward above the surface. Those cliffs were
four thousand feet high, and from them the island sloped very gently
and very gradually until its leeward shore slipped under the restless
sea. Sector Headquarters had been placed here because it seemed that
civilians would not want to colonize so limited a world. But there were
civilians, because there was Headquarters. And now every inch of ground
was cultivated, and there was irrigation and intensive farming and
some hydroponic establishments. However, Sector Headquarters included
a vast reserve-area on which a space-fleet might be marshalled in case
of need. The over-crowded civilians were bitter because of the great
uncultivated area the Survey needed for storage and possible emergency
use. Even when Bordman was here, years back, there was bitterness
because the Survey crowded the civil economy which had been based on it.
Bordman considered all these items, and came to an uncomfortable
conclusion. Presently he looked up. The planet loomed larger. Much
larger.
"I think you'd better lose all planetward velocity before we hook on,"
he observed. "The landing-grid crew might have trouble focusing on us
so close if we're moving."
"Yes, sir," said the young officer.
"There's some sort of merry hell below," said Bordman. "It looks bad
that they won't let a ship come down by grid. It looks worse that they
won't let this one land on its rockets." He paused. "I doubt they'll
risk lifting us off again."
Young Barnes finished his computations. He looked satisfied. He glanced
at the now-gigantic planet below, and deftly adjusted the course of the
tiny boat. Then he jerked his head around.
"Excuse me, sir. Did you say we mightn't be able to lift off again?"
"I could almost predict that we won't," said Bordman.
"Would you--could you say why, sir?"
"They don't want landings. The trouble is here. If they don't want
landings, they won't want launchings. Werner and I were sent for, so
presumably we're needed. But apparently there's uneasiness about even
our landing. They won't send us off again. I suspect--"
The loud-speaker said tinnily:
"_Calling boat from landing-grid! Calling boat from landing-grid!_"
"Come in," said Barnes, looking uneasily at Bordman.
"_Correct your course!_" commanded the voice. "_You are not to
land on rockets under any circumstances! This is an order from the
Sector Chief himself. Stand off! We will be ready to lock on and land
you gently in about fifteen minutes. But meanwhile stand off!_"
"Yes, sir," said young Barnes.
Bordman reached over and took the microphone.
"Bordman speaking," he said. "I'd like information. What's the trouble
down there that we can't use our rockets?"
"_Rockets are noisy, sir. Even boat-rockets. We have orders to
eliminate all physical vibration possible, sir. But I am ordered not to
give details on a transmitter, sir._"
"I sign off," said Bordman, drily.
He pushed the microphone away. He deplored his own lack of
aggressiveness. Werner, now, would have pulled his rank and insisted on
being informed. But Bordman couldn't help believing that there was a
reason for orders that overruled his own.
The young officer swung the rocket end-for-end. The sensation of
pressure against the back of Bordman's seat increased.
Minutes later the speaker said:
"_Grid to boat. Prepare for lock-on._"
"Ready, sir," said Barnes.
The small boat shuddered and leaped crazily. It spun. It oscillated
violently through seconds-long arcs in emptiness. Very gradually the
oscillations died. There was a momentary sensation of the faint tugging
of planetary weight, which is somehow subtly different from the feel of
artificial gravity. Then the cosmos turned upside down as the boat was
drawn swiftly toward the watery planet below it.
Some minutes later, young Barnes spoke:
"Beg pardon, sir," he said apologetically. "I must be stupid, sir, but
I can't imagine any reason why vibrations or noises should make any
difference on a planet. How could it do harm?"
"This is an ocean-planet," said Bordman. "It might make people drown."
The young officer flushed and turned his head away. And Bordman
reflected that the young were always sensitive. But he did not speak
again. When they landed in the spidery, half-mile-high landing-grid,
Barnes would find out whether he was right or not.
He did. And Bordman was right. The people on Canna III were anxious to
avoid vibrations because they were afraid of drowning.
Their fears seemed to be rather well-founded.
* * * * *
Three hours after landing, Bordman 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. Bordman 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.
Bordman 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 Bordman absently, "by
towing a floating line of some sort between them. There isn't enough
oil to maintain the slick, and it's blown land-ward. 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 Bordman, not looking to sea-ward 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 trough 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."
Bares looked uneasily at the cliff's edge and the line of boats pushing
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.
"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?"
Bordman nodded inland. 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 look
of having been pulled away from where it was withdrawn. There were
vertical breaks in its edges and 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. All along the top of the stone cliff as far as the eye could
see there was this singular retreat of soil and vegetation from the
cliff's edge.
Bordman stooped and picked up a bit of the mud underfoot. He rubbed it
between his fingers. It yielded like modelling 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 Bordman. "That's the first problem here."
He turned to a ground-service Survey private, and 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."
Bordman nodded.
"Hm. We'll go back to Headquarters. Nasty business!"
He plodded over the messy footing toward the vehicle which had brought
him here. It was not an ordinary ground car. Instead of wires 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. It was
thickly coated with the gray mud of this cliff-top.
As he moved along, Bordman 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.
Bordman climbed into the vehicle, and Barnes followed him. The
bolster-truck turned and 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.
Bordman 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 bucked 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 buildings--houses and a shop or two--clustered closely
together on each side of the road.
There were people in and about the house, but they were doing nothing
at all. Some of them stared at the Survey truck with hostility. Some
others deliberately turned their backs to it. There were vehicles out
of shelter and ready to be used, but none was moving. All 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
tilted surface. There was no hill visible anywhere, nor any valleys
save the extremely minor gullies worn by rain. Even they had been
filled in, 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 nothing but tidal seaweed, only
one variety of which had been able to extend itself in weblike fashion
over the soil above water. Terrestrial plants had wiped it out, and
everything was green and 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. At another, there was a narrow, lipless gash in the
ground's surface. An irrigation-ditch poured water into it. It was not
filled.
Barnes said:
"Excuse me, sir, but how the devil did this happen?"
"There's been irrigation," said Bordman patiently. "The soil here was
all ocean-bottom, once--it used to be what is called globigerinous
ooze. There's no sand, and no stones. There's only bed-rock 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. Bordman 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 sheet of metal that's tilted a bit. 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.
Bordman 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 Bordman drily. "Ion-exchange systems.
They installed them and had all the fresh water they could wish for.
And they wished for a lot. They deep-ploughed, so the water would sink
in. They dammed the water-courses. What they did amounted to something
like boring holes in that 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 get wet--and the soap would slide! As if it were
greased!"
"Not greased," corrected Bordman. "Soaped. Soap is viscous. That's
different, and a lucky difference, too. But the least vibration would
encourage movement. And it does. 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 bed-rock. And so
there's a slow, gentle, gradual sliding."
"And they figure," said Barnes, "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," Bordman 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 Bordman 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 that 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 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 already 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 desperately over-crowded.
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 up-surging of dust, and a
rumbling of falling, hardened dirt. 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 me feel--queer," he said unsteadily. "A shock like that
wall falling could start everything off!"
Bordman said nothing at all. It had occurred to him that there was no
irrigation of the Survey area. He frowned thoughtfully, even worriedly,
as the truck went inside the Headquarters gate and rolled on over a
winding road through park-like 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 Bordman
got out of the truck the dog got up with a leisurely air. And when
Bordman ascended the steps, with Barnes following him, the dog came
forward with a sort a stately courtesy to do the honors. Bordman said:
"Nice dog, that."
He went inside. The dog followed. The interior of the building was
empty, and there was a sort of resonant silence until somewhere a
telewriter began to click.
"Come along," said Bordman. "The Sector Chief's office is over this
way."
Young Barnes followed.
"It seems odd there's no one around," he said. "No secretaries, no
sentries, nobody at all."
"Why should there be?" asked Bordman 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 the glistening, empty floor there ran an ominous crack.
They went down a corridor. Voices sounded, and Bordman tracked them,
with the paws of the dog clicking on the floor behind him. He led
the way into a spacious, comfortably non-descript room with high
windows--doors, really--that opened on green lawns outside. The Sector
Chief, Sandringham, leaned back in a chair, smoking. Werner, the other
summoned Senior Officer, sat bolt upright in a chair facing him.
Sandringham waved a hand to Bordman.
"Back so soon? You're ahead of schedule on all counts! Here's Werner,
back from looking at the fuel-store situation."
Bordman 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 Bordman. "Lieutenant
Barnes. Very promising young officer. Cut my landing-time by hours.
Lieutenant, this is Sector Chief Sandringham and Mr. Werner."
"Have a seat, Bordman," grunted the Chief. "You too, Lieutenant. How
does it look up on the cliff, Bordman?"
"I suspect you know as well as I do," said Bordman. "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 Bordman. "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 bed-rock all over the island. The
left-behind mud's like pea soup. It looks really bad! But what's the
viscosity at bed-rock with soil pressing down, and I hope drier soil
than at the bottom?"
Sandringham grunted.
"Good question. I sent for you, Bordman, 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 Bordman 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 may 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
Bordman remembered:
"What's happening serves them right! It serves them right!"
Bordman waited.
"Now," said Sandringham, "they're 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 is plenty! Bordman, 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 Bordman. "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!"
Bordman 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--else you would 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, embarrassed.