Heavy Planet Part 3

"What we could use, Barl, is a pa.s.sage from one of these seas into the other," remarked Lackland one day. The Mesklinite, sprawled comfortably on his ledge outside the window, gestured agreement silently. It was past midwinter now, and the greater sun was becoming perceptibly dimmer as it arched on its swift path across the sky to the north. "Are you sure that your people know of none? After all, most of these pictures were taken in the fall, and you say that the ocean level is much higher in the spring."

"We know of none, at any season," replied the captain. "We know something, but not much, of the ocean you speak of; there are too many different nations on the land between for very much contact to take place. A single caravan would be a couple of years on the journey, and as a rule they don't travel that far. Goods pa.s.s through many hands on such a trip, and it's a little hard to learn much about their origin by the time our traders see them in the western seaports of the isthmus. If any pa.s.sage such as we would like exists at all, it must be here near the Rim where the lands are almost completely unexplored. Our map-the one you and I are making-does not go far enough yet. In any case, there is no such pa.s.sage south of here during the autumn; I have been along the entire coast line as it was then, remember. Perhaps, however, this very coast reaches over to the other sea; we have followed it eastward for several thousand miles, and simply do not know how much farther it goes."

"As I remember, it curves north again a couple of thousand miles past the outer cape, Bart-but of course that was in the autumn, too, when I saw it. It's going to be quite troublesome, this business of making a usable map of your world. It changes too much. I'd be tempted to wait until next autumn so that at least we could use the map we made, but that's four of my years away. I can't stay here that long."

"You could go back to your own world and rest until the time came though I would be sorry to see you go."

"I'm afraid that would be a rather long journey, Barlennan."

"How far?"

"Well-your units of distance wouldn't help much. Let's see. A ray of light could travel around Mesklin's *Rim' in-ah-four fifths of a second." He demonstrated this time interval with his watch, while the native looked on with interest. "The same ray would take a little over eleven of my years; that's-about two and a quarter of yours, to get from here to my home."

"Then your world is too far to see? You never explained these things to me before."

"I was not sure we had covered the language problem well enough. No, my world cannot be seen, but I will show you my sun when winter is over and we have moved to the right side of yours." The last phrase pa.s.sed completely over Barlennan's head, but he let it go. The only suns he knew were the bright Belne whose coming and going made day and night, and the fainter Esstes, which was visible in the night sky at this moment. In a little less than half a year, at midsummer, the two would be close together in the sky, and the fainter one hard to see; but Barlennan had never bothered his head about the reason for these motions.

Lackland had put down the photograph he was holding, and seemed immersed in thought. Much of the floor of the room was already covered with loosely fitted pictures; the region best known to Barlennan was already mapped fairly well. However, there was yet a long, long way to go before the area occupied by the human outpost would be included; and the man was already being troubled by the refusal of the photographs to fit together. Had they been of a spherical or nearly spherical world like Earth or Mars, he could have applied the proper projection correction almost automatically on the smaller map which he was constructing, and which covered a table at one side of the chamber; but Mesklin was not even approximately spherical. As Lackland had long ago recognized, the proportions of the Bowl on the Bree-Barlennan's equivalent of a terrestrial globe-were approximately right. It was six inches across and one and a quarter deep, and its curvature was smooth but far from uniform.

To add to the difficulty of matching photographs, much of the planet's surface was relatively smooth, without really distinctive topographic feature; and even where mountains and valleys existed, the different shadowing of adjacent photographs made comparison a hard job. The habit of the brighter sun of crossing from horizon to horizon in less than nine minutes had seriously disarranged normal photographic procedure; successive pictures in the same series were often illuminated from almost opposite directions.

"We're not getting anywhere with this, Barl," Lackland said wearily. "It was worth a try as long as there might be short cuts, but you say there are none. You're a sailor, not a caravan master; that four thousand miles overland right where gravity is greatest is going to stump us."

"The knowledge that enables you to fly, then, cannot change weight?"

"It cannot." Lackland smiled. "The instruments which are on that rocket grounded at your south pole should have readings which might teach us just that, in time. That is why the rocket was sent, Barlennan; the poles of your world have the most terrific surface gravity of any spot in the Universe so far accessible to us. There are a number of other worlds even more ma.s.sive than yours, and closer to home, but they don't spin the way Mesklin does; they're too nearly spherical. We wanted measures in that tremendous gravity field-all sorts of measures. The value of the instruments that were designed and sent on that trip cannot be expressed in numbers we both know; when the rocket failed to respond to its takeoff signal, it rocked the governments of ten planets. We must have that data, even if we have to dig a ca.n.a.l to get the Bree into the other ocean."

"But what sort of devices were on board this rocket?" Barlennan asked. He regretted the question almost in the same instant; the Flyer might wonder at such specific curiosity, and come to suspect the captain's true intentions. However, Lackland appeared to take the query as natural.

"I'm afraid I can't tell you, Barl. You simply have no background which would give words like *electron' and *neutrino' and *magnetism' and *quantum' any meaning at all. The drive mechanism of the rocket might mean a little more to you, but I doubt it." In spite of Lackland's apparent freedom from suspicion, Barlennan decided not to pursue the subject.

"Would it not be well," he said, "to seek the pictures that show the sh.o.r.e and inland regions east of here?"

Lackland replied, "There is still some chance, I suppose, that they do meet; I don't pretend to have memorized the whole area. Maybe down next to the icecap-how much cold can you people stand?"

"We are uncomfortable when the sea freezes, but we can stand it-if it does not get too much colder. Why?"

"It's just possible you may have to crowd the northern icecap pretty closely. We'll see, though." The Flyer riffled through the stack of prints, still taller than Barlennan was long, and eventually extracted a thin sheaf. "One of these ..." His voice trailed off for a few moments. "Here we are. This was taken from the inner edge of the ring, Barl, over six hundred miles up, with a narrow.a.n.gle telephoto lens. You can see the main sh.o.r.e line, and the big bay, and here, on the south side of the big one, the little bay where the Bree is beached. This was taken before this station was built-though it wouldn't show anyway.

"Now let's start a.s.sembling again. The sheet east of this ..." He trailed off again, and the Mesklinite watched in fascination as a readable map of the lands he had not yet reached took form below him. For a time it seemed they were to be disappointed, for the sh.o.r.e line gradually curved northward as Lackland had thought; indeed, some twelve hundred miles to the west and four or five hundred north, the ocean seemed to come to an end-the coast curved westward again. A vast river emptied into it at this point, and with some hope at first that this might be a strait leading to the eastern sea, Lackland began fitting the pictures that covered the upper reaches of the mighty stream. He was quickly disabused of this idea, by the discovery of an extensive series of rapids some two hundred and fifty miles upstream; east of these, the great river dwindled rapidly. Numerous smaller streams emptied into it; apparently it was the main artery for the drainage system of a vast area of the planet. Interested by the speed with which it broke up into smaller rivers, Lackland continued building the map eastward, watched with interest by Barlennan.

The main stream, as far as it could be distinguished, had s.h.i.+fted direction slightly, flowing from a more southerly direction. Carrying the mosaic of pictures in this direction, they found a range of very fair-sized mountains, and the Earthman looked up with a rueful shake of his head. Barlennan had come to understand the meaning of this gesture.

"Do not stop yet!" the captain expostulated. "There is a similar range along the center of my country, which is a fairly narrow peninsula. At least build the picture far enough to determine how the streams flow on the other side of the mountains." Lackland, though not optimistic-he recalled the South American continent on his own planet too clearly to a.s.sume any symmetry of the sort the Mesklinite seemed to expect-complied with the native's suggestion. The range proved to be fairly narrow, extending roughly east-northeast by west-southwest; and rather to the man's surprise the numerous "water" courses on the opposite side began very quickly to show a tendency to come together in one vast river. This ran roughly parallel with the range for mile after mile, broadening as it went, and hope began to grow once more. It reached a climax five hundred miles downstream, when what was now a vast estuary merged indistinguishably with the "waters" of the eastern ocean. Working feverishly, scarcely stopping for food or even the rest he so badly needed in Mesklin's savage gravity, Lackland worked on; and eventually the floor of the room was covered by a new map-a rectangle representing some two thousand miles in an east-west line and half as far in the other dimension. The great bay and tiny cove where the Bree was beached showed clearly at its western end; much of the other was occupied by the featureless surface of the eastern sea. Between lay the land barrier.

It was narrow; at its narrowest, some five hundred miles north of the equator, it was a scant eight hundred miles from coast to coast, and this distance was lessened considerably if one measured from the highest usable points of the princ.i.p.al rivers. Perhaps three hundred miles, part of it over a mountain range, was all that lay between the Bree and a relatively easy path to the distant goal of the Earthmen's efforts. Three hundred miles; a mere step, as distances on Mesklin went.

Unfortunately, it was decidedly more than a step to a Mesklinite sailor. The Bree was still in the wrong ocean; Lackland, after staring silently for many minutes at the mosaic about him, said as much to his tiny companion. He expected no answer, or at most a dispirited agreement; his statement was selfevidently true-but the native fooled him.

"Not if you have more of the metal on which we brought you and the meat back!" was Barlennan's instantaneous reply.

6: THE SLED.

For another long moment Lackland stared out the window into the sailor's eyes, while the implications of the little creature's remark sank into his mind; then he stiffened into something as closely approaching an alert att.i.tude as the gravity permitted.

"You mean you would be willing to tow the Bree overland on a sledge, as you did me?"

"Not exactly. The s.h.i.+p outweighs us very much, and we would have the same trouble with traction that we did before. What I had in mind was your towing, with another tank."

"I see. I-see. It would certainly be possible, unless we hit terrain that the tank couldn't pa.s.s. But would you and your crew be willing to make such a journey? Would the extra trouble and distance from your home be repaid by the little we could do for you?"

Barlennan extended his pincers in a smile.

"It would be much better than what we originally planned. There are trading goods that come from the sh.o.r.es of the eastern ocean to our country, by the long caravan routes overland; by the time they reach the ports on our own sea, they are already fabulously expensive, and an honest trader cannot make a decent profit from them. This way, if I picked them up directly-well, it would be certainly very worth while indeed, for me. Of course, you would have to promise to bring us back across the isthmus when we returned."

"That would certainly be fair enough, Barl; I'm sure my people will gladly agree to it. But how about the land travel itself? This is country you know nothing about, as you have said; might not your crew be afraid of unknown land, and high hills over them, and maybe animals larger than can possibly grow in your part of the world?"

"We have faced dangers before," the Mesklinite replied. "I was able to get used to high places-even the top of your tank. As for animals, the Bree is armed with fire, and none that walk on land could be as large as some that swim the oceans."

"That's true enough, Barl. Very well. I was not trying to discourage you, goodness knows; but I wanted to be sure you had thought the matter over before you embarked on such a project. It's hardly one that can be backed out of in the middle."

"That I can readily understand, but you need not fear, Charles. I must return to the s.h.i.+p now; the clouds are gathering again. I will tell the crew what we are going to do; and lest the thoughts of fear should come to any of them, I will remind them that the profits of the voyage will be shared according to rank. There is no member of that crew who would put fear in the way of wealth."

"And you?" Lackland chuckled as he asked the question.

"Oh, I'm not afraid." The Mesklinite vanished into the night as he spoke the words, and Lackland was never sure just how he meant them.

Rosten, when he heard the new plan, made a number of caustic remarks to the effect that Lackland could certainly be counted on for ideas that would give him use of a tank.

"It seems as though it should work, though," he admitted grudgingly. "Just what sort of sled are we supposed to build for this ocean liner of your friend's? How big is it, again?"

"The Bree is about forty feet long and fifteen across; I suppose it draws five or six inches. It's made of a lot of rafts about three feet long and half as wide, roped together so they can move fairly freely-I can guess why, on this world."

"Hmph. So can I. If a s.h.i.+p that long had its two ends supported by waves while the middle hung free, up near the pole, it would be in pieces before long whether it started that way or not. How is it driven?"

"Sails; there are masts on twenty or thirty of the rafts. I suspect there may be centerboards on some of them too, retractable so the s.h.i.+p can be beached; but I never asked Barlennan. I don't really know how far advanced the art of sailing is on this world, but from the casual way in which he speaks of crossing long stretches of open ocean, I a.s.sume they know about beating into a wind."

"Seems reasonable. Well, we'll build something out of light metal here on the moon, and cart it down to you when we finish."

"You'd better not bring it down until winter's over. If you leave it inland it'll get lost under the snow, and if you drop it at the seash.o.r.e someone may have to dive for it, if the water line goes up the way Barlennan expects."

"If it's going to, why is it waiting so long? The winter is more than half over, and there's been a fantastic amount of precipitation in the parts of the southern hemisphere that we can see."

"Why ask me things like that? There are meteorologists on the staff, I believe, unless they've gone crazy trying to study this planet. I have my own worries. When do I get another tank?"

"When you can use it; after winter is over, as I said. And if you blow that one up it'll be no use howling for another, because there isn't one closer than Earth."

Barlennan, hearing the gist of this conversation at his next visit some hundreds of days later, was perfectly satisfied. His crew was enthusiastic about the proposed trip; they might, as he had implied, be lured by the prospective gain, but there was liberally distributed among them a share of the plain love of adventure which had carried Barlennan so far into unknown territory.

"We will go as soon as the storms break," he said to Lackland. "There will still be much snow on the ground; that will help where the course lies over land different from the loose sand of the beach."

"I don't think it will make much difference to the tank," replied Lackland.

"It will to us," pointed out Barlennan. "I admit it would not be dangerous to be shaken off the deck, but it would be annoying in the middle of a meal. Have you decided what would be the best course to follow across the land?"

"I've been working on it." The man brought out the map that was the result of his efforts. "The shortest route, that we discovered together, has the disadvantage of requiring that I tow you over a mountain range. It might be possible, but I don't like to think of the effects on your crew. I don't know how high those mountains are, but any alt.i.tude is too much on this world.

"I've worked out this route, which I've shown by a red line. It follows up the river that empties into the big bay on this side of the point, for about twelve hundred miles-not counting the small curves in the river, which we probably won't have to follow. Then it goes straight across country for another four hundred or so, and reaches the head of another river. You could probably sail down that if you wanted, or have me keep on towing-whichever would be faster or more comfortable for you. Its worst feature is that so much of it runs three or four hundred miles south of the equator-another half gravity or more for me to take. I can handle it, though."

"If you are sure of that, I would say that this is indeed the best way." Barlennan gave his statement after careful study of the map. "Your towing will probably be faster than sailing, at least in the river where there will probably be no room to tack." He had to use his own language for the last word; Lackland received the explanation of its meaning with satisfaction. He had guessed correctly about the extent of nautical progress among Barlennan's people, it seemed.

With the route agreed on, there was little more for Lackland to do while Mesklin drifted along its...o...b..t toward the next equinox. That would not be too long, of course; with the southern hemisphere's midwinter occurring almost exactly at the time the giant world was closest to its sun, orbital motion during fall and winter was extremely rapid. Each of those seasons was a shade over two Earthly months in length-spring and summer, on the other hand, each occupied some eight hundred and thirty Earth days, roughly twenty-six months. There should be plenty of time for the voyage itself.

Lackland's enforced idleness was not shared aboard the Bree. Preparations for the overland journey were numerous and complicated by the fact that no member of the crew knew exactly what the s.h.i.+p would have to face. They might have to make the entire journey on stored food; there might be animal life along the way sufficient not only to feed them but to provide trading material if its skins and bones were of the right sort. The trip might be as safe as the sailors avowedly believed all land journeys to be, or they might face dangers from both the terrain and the creatures inhabiting it. About the first they could do little; that was the Flyer's responsibility. Concerning the second, weapons were brought to a high degree of readiness. Bigger clubs than even Hars or Terblannen could swing up in the higher lat.i.tudes were manufactured; some of the plants which stored crystals of chlorine in their stems were found, and the flame tanks replenished from them. There were, of course, no projectile weapons; the idea had never developed on a world where none of the inhabitants had ever seen a solid, unsupported object dropping because it fell too fast to be visible. A 50-caliber bullet fired horizontally at Mesklin's pole would drop over one hundred feet in its first hundred yards of travel. Barlennan, since meeting Lackland, had come to have some idea of the "throw" concept and had even considered asking the Flyer about the possibility of weapons based on the principle; but he had decided to stick to more familiar arms. Lackland, on his part, had done a little wondering about the possible results of meeting a race, on their trip across the isthmus, which had developed the bow and arrow. He did a little more than Barlennan with the thought; he outlined the situation to Rosten and asked that the towing tank be equipped with a 40-millimeter gun with thermite and explosive sh.e.l.ls. After the usual grumbling Rosten had acquiesced.

The sled was finished easily and quickly; large amounts of sheet metal were available, and the structure was certainly not complicated. Following Lackland's advice, it was not brought to the surface of Mesklin immediately, since the storms were still depositing their loads of ammonia-tainted methane snow. The ocean level had still not risen appreciably near the equator, and the meteorologists had been making unkind remarks at first about Barlennan's truthfulness and linguistic ability; but as sunlight reached farther and farther into the southern hemisphere with the approach of spring, and new photographs were secured and compared with those of the preceding fall, the weather men grew silent and were observed wandering around the station muttering distractedly to themselves. The sea level in the higher lat.i.tudes had already risen several hundreds of feet, as the native had predicted, and was still rising visibly as the days went by. The phenomenon of widely differing sea levels at the same time on the same planet was a little outside the experience of Earth-trained meteorologists, and none of the non-human scientists with the expedition could throw any light on the matter, either. The weather men were still racking their brains when the sun's diurnal arc eased southward past the equator and spring officially began in Mesklin's southern hemisphere.

The storms had decreased tremendously in both frequency and intensity long before this time, partly because the planet's extreme flattening had cut down the radiation on the north polar cap very rapidly after midwinter and partly because Mesklin's distance from the sun had increased more than fifty percent during the same time; Barlennan, when consulted on the matter, proved perfectly willing to start the journey with the astronomical advent of spring, and showed no apparent anxiety about equinoctial gales.

Lackland reported the natives' readiness to the station on the inner moon, and the operation of transferring tank and sled to the surface was started at once; everything had been in readiness for weeks.

Two trips of the cargo rocket were necessary, though the sledge was light and the thrust developed by the hydrogen-iron slugs fantastically high. The sled was brought down first, with the intention of letting the crew of the Bree haul it onto the structure while the rocket went back for the tank; but Lackland warned against landing close to the s.h.i.+p, so that the clumsy-looking vehicle was left beside the dome until the tractor arrived to tow it over to the sh.o.r.e. Lackland himself drove the tractor, although the crew of the rocket stood by to satisfy their curiosity and, if needed, lend a.s.sistance with the loading procedure.

No human help was needed. The Mesklinites, under a mere three Earth gravities, were perfectly capable, physically, of lifting their s.h.i.+p and walking off with it; and the insuperable mental conditioning that prevented their getting any part of their bodies underneath such a ma.s.s did not prevent their towing it easily across the beach with ropes-each crewman, of course, anch.o.r.ed firmly to a tree with one or both sets of rear pincers. The Bree, sails furled and centerboards retracted, slid easily across the sand and onto the gleaming platform of metal. Barlennan's winter-long vigilance to keep her from freezing to the beach had proved adequate; also, in the last couple of weeks, the ocean level had started to rise as it had already done farther south. The advancing liquid, which had already necessitated moving the vessel two hundred yards inland, would certainly have melted her free had that been necessary.

The builders of the sledge, on distant Toorey, had provided eyes and cleats in sufficient numbers to allow the sailors to lash the Bree firmly in place. The cordage used appeared remarkably thin to Lackland, but the natives showed full confidence in it. They had some justice, the Earthman reflected; it had held their s.h.i.+p on the beach during storms when he himself would not have cared to walk abroad in full armor. It might, he reflected, be worth while to find out if the cordage and fabric the Mesklinites used could stand terrestrial temperatures.

This train of thought was interrupted by Barlennan's approach with the report that all was ready on the s.h.i.+p and sledge. The latter was already attached to the tank by its tow cable; the tank itself was stocked with sufficient food to last its one-man crew for several days. The plan was to resupply Lackland by rocket whenever necessary, landing far enough ahead so that the flying rocket would not cause too much perturbation to the natives on the s.h.i.+p. This was not to be done oftener than strictly necessary; after the first accident, Lackland did not intend to open the tank to the outer air oftener than he could possibly help.

"I guess we're ready to go, then, little friend," he said in response to Barlennan's statement. "I won't need sleep for a good many hours yet, and we can get quite a distance upstream in that time. I wish your days were of a decent length; I'm not too happy about driving over a snow field in the dark. I don't think even your crew could pull the tank out of a hole, even if they could find the traction."

"I rather doubt it myself, though my ability to judge weight is very uncertain here at the Rim," the captain replied. "I doubt that the risk is very great, however; the snow isn't sticky enough to do a good job of covering a large hole."

"Unless it drifted in to fill it completely. Well, I'll worry about that if and when it happens. All aboard!" He entered the tank, sealed the door, pumped out the Mesklinite atmosphere, and released the Earthly air that had been compressed into tanks before opening the door earlier. The small tank that held the algae whose job was to keep the air fresh glimmered as the circulators began driving bubbles through it. A tiny spectrometric "sniffer" reported the hydrogen content of the air to be negligible; once a.s.sured of this, Lackland started his main motors without further hesitation, and headed the tank and its unwieldy trailer into the east.

The near flatness of the country around the cove changed gradually. In the forty days or so before Lackland had to stop for sleep, they had covered some fifty miles, and were in an area of rolling hills which reached heights of three or four hundred feet. No trouble had been encountered, either in pulling the sledge or in riding it. Barlennan reported on his radio that the crew was enjoying the experience, and that the unusual idleness had not bothered anyone yet. The speed of the tank and its tow was about five miles an hour, which was a good deal faster than the usual Mesklinite crawl; but in the negligible-to them-gravity, some of the crew were going overside and experimenting with other methods of travel. None had actually jumped as yet, but it looked as though Barlennan might have companions before long who shared his newly acquired indifference to falls.

No animal life had been seen so far, but there had been occasional tiny tracks in the snow which apparently belonged to creatures similar to those the Bree's crew had hunted for food during the winter. The plant life was distinctly different; in some places the snow was almost hidden by gra.s.slike vegetation that had grown up through it, and on one occasion the crew was held spellbound at the sight of a growth which to Lackland resembled a rather stumpy tree. The Mesklinites had never seen anything grow so far from the ground.

While Lackland slept as comfortably as he could in his cramped quarters, the crew spread out over the surrounding country. They were at least partly motivated by a desire for fresh flood, but salable cargo was the goal that really moved them. All were familiar with a wide variety of the plants which produced what Lackland had called spices, but none of these grew anywhere in the neighborhood. There were numerous growths bearing seeds, and nearly all had leaflike appendages of one sort or another and roots; the trouble was there seemed no way of telling whether these were even safe to eat, to say nothing of being palatable. None of Barlennan's sailors was rash or naive enough to take even a taste of a plant he had never seen; too much of Mesklin's vegetable life protected itself with fearsome efficiency with poisons. The usual means of testing in such cases involved trusting to the senses of any of several small animals commonly used by the Mesklinites as pets; what a parsk or a ternee would eat was safe. Unfortunately, the only such animal aboard the Bree had not survived the winter-or rather, the equator; it had blown away in the advance gust of one of the winter storms when its owner failed to lash it down in time.

The sailors did, indeed, bring numerous hopeful-looking specimens back to the s.h.i.+p; but none of them could offer a practical suggestion as to what to do with his find. Dondragmer alone made what might be termed a successful trip; more imaginative than his fellows, he had thought to look under objects, and had indeed turned over a great many stones. He had been a little uneasy at first, but his nervousness had finally worn off completely; and a genuine enthusiasm for the new sport had possessed him. There were lots of things to be found under even quite heavy stones, he discovered; and he presently returned to the s.h.i.+p carrying a number of objects which everyone agreed must be eggs. Karondrasee took them in charge-no one was afraid of eating any sort of animal food-and presently the opinion was confirmed. They were eggs-very good, too. Only after they had been consumed did anyone think of hatching some of them to learn what sort of animal they might belong to; and with that thought voiced, Dondragmer carried it a step further by suggesting that perhaps they might hatch an animal which could serve in the place of the missing ternee. This idea was enthusiastically accepted, and parties sallied forth once more to look for eggs. The Bree had become practically an incubator by the time Lackland woke up.

Making sure that all the Bree's crew had returned aboard, he restarted the tank and resumed the eastward journey. The hills grew higher in the next few days, and twice they crossed streams of methane, fortunately so narrow that the sled could actually bridge them. It was well that the rise in the hills was gradual, for there was a little uneasiness among the sailors whenever they had to look down any distance; but that, Barlennan reported, was gradually decreasing.

And then, some twenty days after the start of the second lap of the journey, their minds were taken completely off the terrors of height by something which seized and froze the attention of every living being on both vehicles.

7: STONE DEFENSE.

Up to this time, most of the hills had been gentle, smooth slopes, their irregularities long since worn off by weather. There had been no sign of the holes and creva.s.ses which Lackland somewhat feared before starting. The hilltops had been smoothly rounded, so that even had their speed been much higher the crossing of one would hardly have been noticed. Now, however, as they topped such an acclivity and the landscape ahead came into view, a difference in the next hill caught every eye at once.

It was longer than most they had crossed, more a ridge across their path than a mound; but the great difference was in the top. Instead of the smooth, wind-worn curve presented by its fellows, it seemed at first glance actually jagged; a closer look showed that it was crowned with a row of boulders s.p.a.ced with regularity that could only mean intelligent arrangement. The rocks ranged from monstrous things as big as Lackland's tank down to fragments of basketball size; and all, while rough in detail, were generally spherical in shape. Lackland brought his vehicle to an instant halt and seized his gla.s.ses-he was in partial armor, but was not wearing the helmet. Barlennan, forgetting the presence of his crew, made a leap over the twenty yards separating the Bree from the tank and settled firmly on top of the latter. A radio had been fastened there for his convenience long before, and he was talking almost before he had landed.

"What is it, Charles? Is that a city, such as you were telling me about on your own world? It doesn't look very much like your pictures."

"I was hoping you could tell me," was the answer. "It certainly is not a city, and the stones are too far apart for the most part to be any sort of wall or fort that I could imagine. Can you see anything moving around them? I can't with these gla.s.ses, but I don't know how keen your eyesight is."

"I can just see that the hilltop is irregular; if the things on top are loose stones, I'll have to take your word for it until we're closer. Certainly I can see nothing moving. Anything my size would be impossible to see at that distance anyway, I should think."

"I could see you at that range without these gla.s.ses, but I couldn't count your eyes or arms. With them I can say pretty certainly that that hilltop is deserted. Just the same, I'll practically guarantee that those stones didn't get there by accident; we'd better keep eyes open for whoever set them up. Better warn your crew." Lackland mentally noted the fact of Barlennan's poorer eyesight; he was not physicist enough to have predicted it from the size of the native's eyes.

For two or three minutes, while the sun moved far enough to reveal most of the areas previously in shadow, they waited and watched; but nothing except the shadows moved, and finally Lackland started the tank once more. The sun set while they were descending the slope. The tank had only one searchlight, which Lackland kept aiming at the ground in his path; so they could not see what, if anything, went on among the stones above. Sunrise found them just crossing another brook, and tension mounted as they headed uphill once more. For a minute or two nothing was visible, as the sun was directly ahead of the travelers; then it rose far enough to permit clear forward vision. None of the eyes fastened on the hilltop could detect any change from its appearance of the night before. There was a vague impression, which Lackland found was shared by the Mesklinites, that there were now more stones; but since no one had attempted to make a count of them before, this could not be proved. There was still no visible motion.

It took five or six minutes to climb the hill at the tank's five-mile speed, so the sun was definitely behind them when they reached the top. Lackland found that several of the gaps between the larger stones were wide enough for the tank and sled, and he angled toward one of these as he approached the crest of the ridge. He crunched over some of the smaller boulders, and for a moment Dondragmer, on the s.h.i.+p behind, thought one of them must have damaged the tank, for the machine came to an abrupt halt. Barlennan could be seen still on top of the vehicle, all his eyes fixed on the scene below him; the Flyer was not visible, of course, but after a moment the Bree's mate decided that he, too, must be so interested in the valley beyond as to have forgotten about driving.

"Captain! What is it?" Dondragmer hurled the question even as he gestured the weapons crew to the flame tanks. The rest of the crew distributed themselves along the outer rafts, clubs, knives, and spears in readiness, without orders. For a long moment Barlennan gave no answer, and the mate was on the point of ordering a party overboard to cover the tank-he knew nothing of the nature of the jury-rigged quick-firer at Lackland's disposal-when his captain turned, saw what was going on, and gave a rea.s.suring gesture.

"It's all right, I guess," he said. "We can see no one moving, but it looks a little like a town. Just a moment and the Flyer will pull you forward so that you can see without going overboard." He s.h.i.+fted back to English and made this request to Lackland, who promptly complied. This action produced an abrupt change in the situation.

What Lackland had seen at first-and Barlennan less clearly-was a broad, shallow, bowllike valley entirely surrounded by hills of the type they were on. There should, Lackland felt, have been a lake at the bottom; there was no visible means of escape for rain or melted snow. Then he noticed that there was no snow on the inner slopes of the hills; their topography was bare. And strange topography it was.

It could not possibly have been natural. Starting a short distance below the ridges were broad, shallow channels. They were remarkably regular in arrangement; a cross section of the hills taken just below where they started would have suggested a very pretty series of ocean waves. As the channels led on downhill toward the center of the valley they grew narrower and deeper, as though designed to lead rain water toward a central reservoir. Unfortunately for this hypothesis, they did not all meet in the center-they did not even all reach it, though all got as far as the relatively level, small floor of the valley. More interesting than the channels themselves were the elevations separating them. These, naturally, also grew more p.r.o.nounced as the channels grew deeper; on the upper half of the slopes they were smoothly rounded ridges, but as the eye followed them down their sides grew steeper until they attained a perpendicular junction with the channel floors. A few of these little walls extended almost to the center of the valley. They did not all point toward the same spot; there were gentle curves in their courses that gave them the appearance of the f.l.a.n.g.es of a centrifugal pump rather than the spokes of a wheel. Their tops were too narrow for a man to walk on.

Lackland judged that channels and separating walls alike were some fifteen or twenty feet wide where they broke off. The walls themselves, therefore, were quite thick enough to be lived in, especially for Mesklinites; and the existence of numerous openings scattered over their lower surfaces lent strength to the idea that they actually were dwellings. The gla.s.ses showed that those openings not directly at the bottoms of the walls had ramps leading up to them; and before he saw a single living thing, Lackland was sure he was examining a city. Apparently the inhabitants lived in the separating walls, and had developed the entire structure in order to dispose of rain. Why they did not live on the outer slopes of the hills, if they wanted to avoid the liquid, was a question that did not occur to him.

He had reached this point in his thoughts when Barlennan asked him to pull the Bree over the brow of the hill before the sun made good seeing impossible. The moment the tank began to move, a score of dark figures appeared in the openings that he had suspected were doorways; no details were visible at that distance, but the objects, whatever they were, were living creatures. Lackland heroically refrained from stopping the tank and s.n.a.t.c.hing up the gla.s.ses once more until he had pulled the Bree into a good viewing position.

As it turned out, there was no need for him to have hurried. The things remained motionless, apparently watching the newcomers, while the towing maneuver was completed; he was able to spend the remaining minutes before sunset in a careful examination of the beings. Even with the gla.s.ses some details were indistinguishable-for one reason, they seemed not to have emerged entirely from their dwellings; but what could be seen suggested strongly that they belonged to the same race as Barlennan's people. The bodies were long and caterpillarlike; several eyes-they were hard to count at that distance-were on the foremost body segment, and limbs very similar to if not identical with Barlennan's pincer-equipped arms were in evidence. The coloration was a mixture of red and black, the latter predominating as in the Bree's complement.

Barlennan could not see all this, but Lackland relayed the description to him tensely until the city below faded from sight in the dusk. When he stopped talking the captain issued a boiled-down version in his own language to the tensely waiting crew. When that was done Lackland asked: "Have you ever heard of people living this close to the Rim, Barl? Would they be at all likely to be known to you, or even speak the same language?"

"I doubt it very much. My people become very uncomfortable, as you know, north of what you once called the *hundred-G line.' I know several languages, but I can't see any likelihood of finding one of them spoken here."