“Could you get good footing on it?” Dondragmer asked. “Not — not very good, sir.” The mate and the crew knew each other’s thoughts perfectly well. The former made some allowances for the objectivity of Kentherrer’s report. “We’d probably be safe enough, if we roped together. If anyone lost grip on the bottom, the others could hold him until he got it back. I don’t — see — anything to do but — go in and search.”
“Under all that?” one of the men asked before he could control himself. Dondragmer was silent for perhaps a minute. He was reasonably sure they would follow him if he went first, but wasn’t quite sure he could lead. Not there. “You may have something,” he said at last. “Under it, in the dark, there’d be no way to tell where we were going or where we’d searched already. But over it—” By ordinary Mesklinite standards, over was little better than under. One could fall, of course, with a couple of hundred times Rim weight. But this was the Bree’s crew, who had been getting used to up and over in various ways for something like a hundred thousand days now. Over just wasn’t as bad. One of the sailors was sent back to the radio to tell the Flyers what the mate had in mind, and to relay any later messages. In a couple of days the mate and his remaining men were linked in a network of cordage, no one closer than eight body lengths to any other, and no one connected to others by less than four separate safety lines. The climbing was clearly not going to be easy or quick, but it would be as safe as the mate could arrange. Mesklinite legs are extremely short and their feet are not adapted for climbing, but they grip well on any reasonably rough surface. They have evolved for low as well as high gravity, and in the low-gravity latitudes there is always the risk of being blown away. These rocks were rough, in most places. The joints along which they had separated in the recent fall were not, for the most part, slickensides. Travel over them was fairly easy, except for the distraction of looking down so much of the time. Not even the sailors were totally immune to that fear. The rope spiderweb began to flow up and over the fallen slabs. Once all were away from the methane, Dondragmer ordered them to clamber horizontally upstream to the point where the eddy current went straightest into the maze. This served two purposes; it made it likely that they were upstream from wherever the captain might be, and could search downstream with reasonable certainty of passing him — whether they knew it or not. Also, it gave some practice in climbing before getting too far
up. It even gave some practice in falling. Twice one of the sailors lost his grip and found himself hanging from a set of ropes. Both times a hoot of alarm was cut off sharply as the faller realized he was being supported, and managed to control his emotion with his intelligence. Most encouraging of all, neither time did anyone on the other end of the ropes lose his grip. So they started uphill. The rocks were noticeably cooler now. Even with the fog, there was little trouble keeping direction. Each time the web had moved about twice its own width the climbers paused and called loudly. After some days, they reached the top of the slope and were against vertical rock again; they moved a couple of web diameters downstream, and started down again. Every few days they called across the river to report their lack of result to the Flyers. They could make out the voice of the sailor on watch there clearly enough, but he had trouble untangling their words from the echoes. The messages, however, were simple enough—“Nothing yet” as a rule — and there was no real confusion. Back at the bottom, still fastened together, they swam back across to the radio, reported in more detail, then rested and went hunting and fishing. Fed as well, they returned to the up-and-down coverage of the fall. Every so often, an undermethane call was made; it was always answered by a sailor at the methane’s edge. Dondragmer wondered more and more seriously as the days went on what the lost group was doing for food. He was even slower than the captain in thinking of possible fish, but when he did, was much faster in realizing the problems of fishing in the dark. There had been very little food on the balloon, and it had been many days, now. It was the food question which decided Barlennan to take some action of his own. Fish either weren’t around or were able to sense groping chelae, and there had been no fishhooks aboard the balloon. He realized that any information the others might have about his location would be invalidated if they left it, but being found dead of starvation seemed a more serious risk. Besides, he could see no way of the crew’s having any such information. He had also realized that there should be no trouble in deciding which way to go, if they went; not only did the tracker provide a clue, but the current was still flowing past them, apparently unchanged. If they could travel against it, they should sooner or later reach the river. Unfortunately, while it was not flowing nearly as fast as any of them could swim, it was just in the wrong direction, and their own personal strength was failing — not seriously yet, because they’d been simply lying in the basket and occasionally answering what were presumably the mate’s calls, but swimming against a current … Even