“That’s what we’re doing, Captain. I set it up when your order came in a few minutes ago.”
“Good. Then we’ll keep outside lights on and watch the ground around us until we’re ready to go again, or until the blow ends.”
“It’s a nuisance not being able to guess when that will be.”
“It is. At home a storm seldom lasts more than a day, and never more than an hour or so. This world turns so slowly that storm cells can be as big as a continent, and could take hundreds of hours to pass. We’ll just have to wait this one out.”
“You mean we can’t travel until the wind goes down?”
“I’m not sure. Air scouting would be risky, and we couldn’t go fast enough without it for scouting to be worth the trouble, as far as the human crowd is concerned.”
“I don’t like going so fast anyway. You can’t really look over a place unless you stop for a while. We must be missing a lot that even the human funnies would find interesting.”
“They seem to know what they want — something about being able to decide whether Dhrawn is a planet or a star — and they pay the bills. I admit it gets boring for people with nothing to occupy them but routine.” Kervenser let that remark pass without comment, if not without notice. He knew his commander would not have been deliberately insulting, even after the mate’s slighting remark about human beings. This was a point on which Dondragmer differed rather sharply from many of his fellows, who took for granted that the aliens were out for what they could get, like any good traders. The commander had spent more time in close communication with human, Paneshk, and Drommian scientists than had almost any other Mesklinite and, having a rather tolerant and accommodating personality to start with, had become what many of the other Mesklinites regarded as soft with respect to the aliens. Discussion of the matter was rare, and Beetchermarlfs arrival forestalled it this time. He reported completion of checkout. Dondragmer relieved him, ordered him to send the new helmsman to the bridge, and fell silent until the latter arrived. Takoorch, however, was not the sort to live with silence; and when he reached the bridge lost little time in starting what he doubtless considered a conversation. Kervenser, amused as usual by the fellow’s imagination and gall, kept him going; however, Dondragmer ignored all but occasional snatches of the conversation. He was more interested in what was going on outside, little as that seemed to be at the moment. He cut off the bridge lights and all the outside ones but the lowest floods, giving himself a better view of the sky without completely losing touch with the surface. The clouds were fewer and smaller, but they seemed to be moving past quite as rapidly as before. The sound of the wind remained about the same. More stars were slowly appearing. Once he glimpsed one of the Guardians, as the Mesklinite sailors had so quickly named them, low to the south. He could not tell which it was; Sol and Fomalhaut were about equally bright from Dhrawn, and their violent twinkling through the huge world?s atmosphere made color judgment unreliable. The glimpse was brief anyway, since the clouds were not completely gone. “—the whole starboard group of rafts peeled off, with everyone but me on the main body—” Still no rain or snow, and the clearing skies made them seem less likely now, to the captain’s relief. A check with the laboratory through one of the speaking tubes informed him that the temperature was dropping; it was now 75, three degrees below ammonia melting point. Still close enough for trouble with mixtures, but heading in the right direction. “—of the islands south and west of Dingbar. We’d been ridden ashore by a storm bulge, and were high and dry with half the drift boards broken. I—” The stars overhead were almost uninterrupted now; the scud had nearly vanished. The constellations were familiar, of course. Most of the brighter stars in the neighborhood were little affected by a three-parsec change in viewpoint. Dondragmer had had plenty of time to get used to the minor changes, anyway, and no longer noticed them. He tried to find the Guardians once more, but still had no luck. Maybe there were still clouds to the south. It was too dark now to be sure. Even cutting the rest of the floods for a moment didn’t help. It did, however, attract the attention of the other two, and the flow of anecdote ceased for a moment. “Anything changing, Captain?” Kervenser’s jocular attitude vanished at the possibility of action. “Possibly. Stars are showing above, but not to the south. Not anywhere near the horizon, in fact. Try a spot.” The first officer obeyed, and a spear of light flicked upward from a point behind the bridge as he touched one of the few electrical controls. Dondragmer manipulated a pair of pull cables, and the beam swung toward the western horizon. A wail, the rough equivalent of a human grunt of surprise, came from Kervenser as the descending beam became more visible parallel to the ground. “Fog!” exclaimed the helmsman. “Thin, but that’s what’s blocking the horizon.” Dondragmer gave a gesture of agreement as he reared to a speaking tube. “Research!” he hooted. “Possible precipitation. Check what it is, and what it could do to this water ice under us.”
“It will take a while to get a sample, sir,” came the answer. “We’ll be as quick as we can. Are we cleared outside, or will we have to work through the hull?” The captain paused for a moment, listening to the wind and remembering how it had felt. “You’re cleared out. Be as quick as you can.”
“On the way, Captain.” At Dondragmer’s gesture, the first officer cut off the spot, and the three went to the starboard end of the bridge to watch the outside party. They moved quickly but the haze was becoming more noticeable by the time the lock opened. Two caterpillarlike forms emerged carrying a cylindrical package between them. They made their way forward to a point almost under the watchers, and set up their equipment — essentially a funnel facing into the wind and feeding into a filter. It took several minutes to convince them that they had a big enough sample, but eventually they dismantled the equipment, sealed the filter into a container to preserve it from the lock fluid, and made their way back to the entrance. “I suppose it will take them a day to decide what it is, now,” grumbled Kervenser. “I doubt it,” replied the captain. “They’ve been playing with quick tests for water-ammonia solutions. I think Bomdender said something about density being enough, given a decent-sized sample.”
“In that case, why are they taking so long?”
“They could hardly be out of their air suits yet,” the captain pointed out patiently. “Why should they get out of them before making delivery to the lab? Why couldn’t—” A hoot from a speaking tube interrupted him. Dondragmer acknowledged. “Just about pure ammonia, sir. I think it was supercooled liquid droplets; it froze into a froth in the filter, and let quite a bit of outside air loose when it melted in here. If you should smell oxygen for the next few minutes, that’s it. It may start icing up the hull, and if it coats the bridge, as it did the filter, it will interfere with your seeing, but that’s all I can guess at right now in the way of trouble.” It was not all Dondragmer could imagine, but he acknowledged the information without further comment. “This sort of thing hasn’t happened since we’ve been here,” he remarked. “I wonder whether it’s some sort of seasonal change coming on. We are getting closer to this body’s sun. I wish the human crowd had watched this world for a longer time before they sold us on the idea of exploring it for them. It would be so nice to know what comes next. Kervenser, start engines. When ready, turn bow into wind and proceed ahead dead slow, if you can still see out. If not, circle as sharply as possible to port, to stay on surface we know. Keep an eye on the treads — figuratively, of course; we can’t see them without going out — and let me know if there’s evidence that anything is sticking to them. Post a man at the stern port; our trail might show something. Understand?”