“A better idea, to my way of thinking, is to use your dirigible either to rescue my helmsmen if it is decided to give up on the Kwembly, or to start ferrying my crew and equipment over to where she is.”
“But that—”
“That, of course, sinks the raft as far as the Esket act is concerned. Even using Reffel’s helicopter would do that; we couldn’t explain what happened to the vision set he was carrying without their seeing through it, no matter what lie you think up. I’m simply not sure that the trick is worth the deliberate sacrifice of those lives, though I admit it’s worth the risk, of course; I wouldn’t have gone along with it otherwise.”
“So I heard,” returned Kabremm. “No one has been able to make you see the risk of being completely dependent on beings who can’t possibly regard us as real people.”
“Quite right. Remember that some of them are as different from each other, as they are from us. I made up my mind about the aliens the time one of them answered my question about a differential hoist clearly and in detail, and threw in my first lesson in the use of mathematics in science, gratis. I realize the humans differ among themselves as we do; certainly the one who talked Ban out of sending help to the Esket must be as different as possible from Mrs. Hoffman or Charles Lackland — but I don’t and never will distrust them as a species the way you seem to. I don’t think Barlennan really does, either; he’s changed the subject more than once rather than argue the point with me, and that’s not Barlennan when he’s sure he’s right. I still think it would be a good idea to lower the sails on this act and ask directly for human help with the Kwembly. or at least take a chance on their finding out by using all three dirigibles there.”
“There aren’t three, any more.” Kabremm knew the point was irrelevant, but was rather glad of a chance to change the subject. “Karfrengin and four men have been missing in the Elsh for two of this world’s days.”
“That news hadn’t reached me, of course,” said Dondragmer. “How did the commander react to it? I should think that even he would be feeling the temptation to ask for human help, if we’re starting to lose personnel all over the map.
“He hasn’t heard about it, either. We’ve had ground parties out searching, using trucks we salvaged from the Esket, and we didn’t want to make a report until it could be a complete one.”
“How much more complete could it be? Karfrengin and his men must be dead by now. The dirigibles don’t carry life-support gear for two days.”
Kabremm gave the rippling equivalent of a shrug. “Take it up with Destigmet. I have troubles enough.”
“Why wasn’t your flyer used for the search?”
“It was, until this evening. There are other troubles at the mine, though. A sort of ice river is coming, very slowly, but it will soon cover the whole second settlement if it doesn’t stop. It’s already reached the Esket and started to tip it over; that’s why we were able to salvage the trucks so easily. Destigmet sent me to follow back up the glacier and try to find out whether it is likely to keep coming indefinitely, or was just a brief event. I really shouldn’t have come this far, but I couldn’t make myself stop. It’s this same river for the whole distance, sometimes solid and sometimes liquid along the way; it’s the weirdest thing I’ve seen yet on this weird world. There isn’t a chance of the ice’s stopping, and the Esket settlement is as good as done for.”
“And of course Barlennan hasn’t heard about this either.”
“There’s been no way to tell him. We only discovered the ice was moving just before dark. It was just a cliff a few dozen cables from the mine up to then.”
“In other words, we’ve lost not only my first officer and a helicopter but a dirigible with five men, and as an afterthought the whole Esket project, with my Kwembly probably on the same list. And you still think we shouldn’t end this trickery, tell the human beings the whole story, and get their help?”
“More than ever. If they learn we’re having this much trouble, they’ll probably decide we’re no more use to them and abandon us here.”
“Nonsense. No one just abandons an investment like this project; but never mind arguing; it’s a futile point anyway I wish—”
“What you really wish is that you had an excuse for leaking the whole barrel to your oxygen-breathing friends.”
“You know I wouldn’t do that. I’m quite ready to use my own judgment in the field, but I know enough history to be afraid of making spot-changes in basic policy.”
“Thank goodness. It’s all right to like some humans, but they’re not all like the Hoffman one. You admitted that yourself.”
“What it boils down to,” Barlennan said to Bendivence, “is that we were much too hasty in sending Deeslenver to the Esket with orders to shutter its vision sets. The whole Esket question seems to have quieted down, and that will bring it to life again. We’re not ready for the main act yet, and won’t be for a year on more. I wasn’t sorry for the chance to start the human beings thinking along the lines of a native-menace idea, but Destigmet’s crew won’t be able to play the part until they have a lot more home-made mechanical and electrical equipment, things that the humans know we don’t have. Certainly, unless the native menace seems real, the human beings aren’t very likely to take the steps we want.
“If there were any way to go after Dee now and cancel his orders, I’d do it. I wish I’d dared let you go ahead with radio experiments, and had a set on the Deedee right now.”
“It shouldn’t be too risky, and I’d be more than glad to work on it,” answered Bendivence. “The waves could be detected by the human beings, of course, but if we confined ourselves to brief and rare transmissions and used a simple off-on code they probably wouldn’t realize what the source was. However, it’s too late to get Deeslenver, anyway.
“True. I wish I knew why no one up there has said another word about Kabremm. The last time I talked to Mrs. Hoffman, I got the impression that she wasn’t quite as sure as before that she’d really seen him. Do you suppose she really made a mistake? Or are the human beings trying to test us, the way I wanted to do with them? Or has Dondragmer done something to get us off that reef. If she were really wrong, we’ll have to start thinking all over again…
“And what about that other report we’ve heard no more of, something sliding across the Esket’s floor?” countered the scientist. “Was that still another test? Or is something really happening there? Remember, we haven’t had any contact with that base for over a hundred and fifty hours. If the Esket is really being moved by something, we’re much too badly out of date to do anything sensible. You know, without saying anything against the Esket act, it’s an awful nuisance not to be able to trust your data.”
“If there’s real trouble at the Esket we’ll just have to trust Dee’s judgment,” said the commander, ignoring Bedivence’s closing sentence. “Actually, even that isn’t the chief problem. The real question is what to do about Dondragmer and the Kwembly. I suppose he had good reason to leave his ship and let her drift away, but the results have been very awkward. The fact that a couple of his men got left aboard makes it almost more so; if they hadn’t been, we could just forget about the cruiser and send out the Kalliff to pick up the people.”
“Why can’t we do that anyway? Didn’t the human Aucoin suggest it?”
“He did. I said I’d have to think it over.
“Why?”