“I’m afraid so; over a week of our time. Swift’s answer should be back to Nick before then, though.”
“I wish the time didn’t stretch out so on this darned four-days-for-one world. Didn’t I hear you say you’d learned a little of Swift’s language during the time he had the robot at his caves?”
“We did. Not very much, though; it’s extremely hard for a human being to pronounce. We recorded a lot of it; we can give you the sounds, and as much as we could get of the meaning, if you think it will be any help. It’ll help time to pass, anyway.”
Easy’s face appeared in the screen, wearing an impish expression.
“I’m sure it will be very helpful. Won’t it, Daddy?”
Even Rich was grinning. “It will, Daughter. She’ll learn any language she can pronounce nearly as fast as you can give it to her, Doctor.”
“Really? I’ve never heard her talk anything but English to her young friend there.”
“What human being can pronounce Drommian? She understands it as well as I do, though.”
“Well, I wouldn’t bet very much that she could pronounce Tenebran, either. It’s got some sort of pitch-inflected grammar, and a lot of the pitch is above human vocal range. Of course, she’s young and female, but I’ll bet she confines herself to understanding.”
“You may be right. Hadn’t we better get back to the matter in hand? What’s that native doing now, Daughter?”
“He’s walking around, thirty or forty yards from the ’scaphe, looking it over, I suppose. If he’s seen us through the ports he hasn’t shown any sign of it. He’s still alone —I guess you’re right, Dr. Raeker; I remember you sent your people out in pairs, and if anything had happened to one of a pair the other would surely report back to camp before going on with the search.”
“I’m not sure you’re right there, but I am certain it’s one of Swift’s people,” replied Raeker. “Tell us when and if he does anything new.”
“He is now. He’s going out of sight the way he came. He definitely doesn’t carry an axe; we’ve seen all sides of
Raeker glanced at a clock, and did some rapid mental arithmetic. “It’s about four hours to rainfall. Easy, did you say whether he was carrying a lighted torch, or fire in any form?”
“He definitely wasn’t. He could have had matches, or flint and steel, or some such fire-making apparatus in his pouch, of course.”
“Swift’s people don’t know about them. Nick’s group makes fire by friction, with a bow-drill, but I’m sure the others haven’t learned the trick yet. They certainly hadn’t yesterday—that is, three or four ship’s days ago. Anyway, the point I’m trying to get at is that if the one you saw had no fire, he was presumably within about four hours march, or not too much more, of Swift’s main group; and they’d almost have to be either at their caves or near the line between those caves and the point where Nick and the robot took to the river last night. He may be even closer, of course; you’d better keep your eyes open, and let us know immediately if the main body shows up. That would give us a still closer estimate.”
“I understand. We’ll look out for them,” replied Easy. “While we’re watching, how about getting out those language tapes you have? The sooner we start listening to them, the more good they’ll probably do us.”
Raeker agreed to this, and the next few hours passed without any particular incident. Nightfall, and then ram-fall, arrived without any further sign of natives; and when the drops grew clear the children stopped expecting them. They ate, and slept, and spent most of their waking hours trying to absorb what little Raeker had gleaned of Swift’s language. Easy did very well at this, though she was not Ij quite the marvel her father had claimed.
A complication which no one had foreseen, though they certainly should have, manifested itself later in the evening. The bathyscaphe began to move again, as the river formed around it and increased in depth. The children were quite unable even to guess at the rate of motion, though they could see plants and other bits of landscape moving by hi the glare of their lights; the speed was far too irregular. Even if they could have reported anything more precise than “sometimes a fast walk, sometimes a creep, and sometimes not at all,” they were not even sure when the motion had started. They had had their attention drawn to it by an unusually hard bump, and when they had looked outside the few features visible were already unfamiliar. They might have been drifting a minute or half an hour.
Raeker took some comfort from the event, though Easy had been slightly disposed to tears at first.
“This gives us one more chance of getting our own people to you ahead of Swift’s,” he pointed out. “The cave men will have the job of hunting for you all over again, while we are getting you more closely located all the tune.”
“How is that?” asked Easy hi a rather unsteady voice. “You didn’t know where we were before we started moving, we don’t know which way we’re moving, how fast, or when we started. I’d say we know less than we did last night, except you can’t know less than nothing.”
“We don’t know,” granted Raeker, “but we can make a pretty intelligent guess. We judged that you were within a few hours’ walk—say twenty-five or thirty miles—of the line between Swift’s caves and our people’s camp. We are about as sure as we can be without having actually mapped the entire area that this region is in the watershed of the ocean Nick’s people found. Therefore, you are being carried toward that sea, and I’ll be greatly surprised if you don’t wind up floating on it, if not tonight at least in the next night or two. That means that Nick will only have to search along the coast on land if you don’t reach the ocean tonight, or look offshore for lights if you do. I shouldn’t think you’d go far out to sea; the river will lose its push very quickly after getting there, and there’s no wind to speak of on Tenebra.”
Easy had brightened visibly as he spoke. Amina-dorneldo, also visible on the screen, had not made any change of expression detectable to the human watchers, but the girl had cast a glance or two his way and seemed to be satisfied with the effect of Raeker’s words on him. Then a thought seemed to strike her, and she asked a rather pointed question.
“If we do get carried out on the sea, what do Nick’s people or anyone else do about it?” she asked. “We’ll be out of his reach, and out of Swift’s reach, and you say there aren’t any winds on this planet, though I don’t see why.”
“The pressure’s so high that the atmosphere doesn’t even come close to obeying the classical gas laws,” replied Raeker—he was no physicist, but had had to answer the question quite a few times in the last decade and a half— “and the small percentage changes in temperature that do occur result in even smaller changes in volume, and therefore in density, and therefore in pressure. Little pressure difference means little wind. Even changing phase, from gas to liquid, makes so little change in density that the big raindrops just drift down like bubbles, in spite of the gravity.”
“Thanks, I’ll remember to make sense of that when I get back to school,” said Easy. “You’re probably right, but you haven’t answered my question about how Nick was going to reach us if we went out to sea. Forgive me if I’m spoiling an attempt to change the subject.”
Raeker laughed aloud, for the first time in some weeks.
“Good kid. No, I wasn’t trying to change the subject; you just asked a question that every visitor for sixteen years has put to me, and I answer it without even thinking. You pushed a button. As far as your question goes, leave it to me. I’m going to talk to Nick first thing in the morning—he couldn’t do anything right now.”