Part 9 (1/2)

”Hm-m-m.” Maclaren rubbed his chin. His eyes flickered between the other two faces. ”It shouldn't be hard to fix those rocket motors in place, as you say. But a tripod more than a hundred meters long, for a thing as ma.s.sive as this s.h.i.+p-I don't know. If nothing else, how about the servos for it?”

”Please.” Nakamura waved his words aside. ”I realize we have not time to do this properly. My plan does not envision anything with self-adjusting legs. A simple, rigid structure must suffice. We can use the radar to select a nearly level landing place.”

”All places are, down there,” said Maclaren. ”That iron was boiling once, and nothing has weathered it since. Of course, there are doubtless minor irregularities, which would topple us on our tripod-with a thousand tons of ma.s.s to hit the ground!”

Nakamura's eyes drooped. ”It will be necessary for me to react quickly,” he said. ”That is the risk we take.”

WHEN the s.h.i.+p was prepared, they met once on the obser-vation deck, to put on their s.p.a.cesuits. The hull might be cracked in landing. Maclaren and Ryerson would be down at the engine controls, Nakamura in the pilot's turret, strapped into acceleration harness with only their hands left free.

Nakamura's gaze sought Maclaren's. ”We may not meet again,” he said.

”Possible,” said Maclaren.

The small, compact body held steady, but Nakamura's face thawed. He had suddenly, after all the time which was gone, taken on an expression; and it was gentle.

”Since this may be my last chance,” he said, ”I would like to thank you.”

”Whatever for?”

”I am not afraid any more.”

”Don't thank me,” said Maclaren, embarra.s.sed. ”Something like that, a chap does for himself, y' know.”

”You earned me the time for it, at least.” Nakamura made a weightless bow.”Sensei, give me your blessing.”

Maclaren said, with a degree of bewilderment: ”Look here, everybody else has had more skill, contributed more, than I. I've told you a few things about the star and the planet, but you-Dave, at least-could have figured it out with slightly more difficulty. I'd never have known how to reconstruct a drive or a web, though; and I'd never be able to land this s.h.i.+p.”

”I was not speaking of material survival,” said Nakamura. A smile played over his mouth. ”Still, do you remember how disorganized and noisy we were at first, and how we have grown so quiet since and work together so well? It is your doing. The highest interhuman art is to make it possible for others to usetheir arts.” Then, seriously: ”The next stage of achievement, though, lies within a man. You have taught me.

Knowingly or not, Terangi-san, you have taught me. I would give much to be sure you will . . . have the chance . . . to teach yourself.”

Ryerson appeared from the lockers. ”Here they are,” he said. ”Tin suits all around.”

Maclaren donned his armor and went aft.I wonder how much Seiichi knows. Does he know that I've stopped making a fuss about things, that I didn't exult when we found this planet, not from stoicism but merely because I have been afraid to hope?

I wouldn't even know what to hope for. All this struggle, just to get back to Earth and resume having fun? No, that's too grotesque.

”We should have issued the day's chow before going down,” said Ryerson. ”Might not be in any shape to eat it at the other end.”

”Who's got an appet.i.te under present circ.u.mstances?” said Maclaren. ”So postponing dinner is one way of stretching out the rations a few more hours.”

”Seventeen days' worth, now.”

”We can keep going, foodless, for a while longer.”

”We'll have to,” said Ryerson. He wet his lips. ”We won't mine our metal, and gasify it, and separate out the fractional per cent of germanium, and make those transistors, and tune the circuits, in any seventeen days.”

Maclaren grimaced. ”Starvation, or the canned w.i.l.l.y we've been afflicted with. Frankly, I don't think there's much differ-ence.”

Hastily, he grinned at Ryerson, so the boy would know it for a jest. Grumbling was not allowed any more; they didn't dare. And the positive side of conversation, the dreaming aloud of ”when we get home,”

had long since worn thin. Dinner-table conversation had been a ritual they needed for a while, but in a sense they had outgrown it. Now a man was driven into his own soul.And that's what Seiichi meant, thought Maclaren.Only, I haven't found anything in myself Or, no. I have. But I don't know what.

It's too dark to see.

He strapped himself in and began checking instruments.

”Pilot to engine room. Read off!”

”Engine room to pilot. Plus voltage clear. Minus voltage clear. Mercury flow standard-”

The s.h.i.+p came to life.

And she moved down. Her blast slowed her in orbit, she spiraled, a featureless planet of black steel called her to itself. The path was cautious. There must be allowance for rotation; there must not be too quick a change of velocity, lest the pon-derous sphere go wobbling out of control. Again and again the auxiliary motors blasted, spinning her, guiding her. The ion-drive was not loud, but the rockets roared on the hull like hammers.

And down. And down.

Only afterward, reconstructing confused memories, did Maclaren know what had happened; and he was never alto-gether sure. TheCross backed onto an iron plain. Her tripod touched, on one foot, on two.

The surface was not quite level. She began to topple. Nakamura lifted her with a skill that blended main drive and auxiliaries into one smooth surge- such skill as only an utterly relaxed man could achieve, re-sponding to the immense s.h.i.+fting forces as a part thereof. He rose a few hundred meters, changed position relative to the ground, and tried again. The tripod struck on two points once more. The s.h.i.+p toppled again. The third leg went off a small bluff, no more than a congealed ripple in the iron. It hit ground hard enough to buckle.

Nakamura raised s.h.i.+p barely in time. For an instant he poised in the sky on a single leg of flame, keeping his balance with snorts of rocket thrust. The bottom of theCross' stern a.s.sembly was not many meters above ground.

Suddenly he killed the ion drive. Even as the s.h.i.+p fell, he spun her clear around on the rotator jets. The Cross struck nose first. The pilot's turret smashed, the bow caved in, auto-matic bulkheads slammed shut to save the air that whistled out. That was a great ma.s.s, and it struck hard. The sphere was crushed flat for meters aft of the bow. With her drive and her unharmed transceiver web aimed at the sky, the s.h.i.+p rested like Columbus' egg.

And the stars glittered down upon her.

Afterward Maclaren wondered: Nakamura might well have decided days beforehand that he would probably never be able to land any other way. Or he might have considered that his rations would last two men an extra week. Or perhaps, simply, he found his dark bride.

THE planet spun quickly about its axis, once in less than ten hours. There went never a day across its iron plains, but hunger and the stars counted time. There was no wind, no rain, no sea, but a man's radio hissed with the thin dry talk of the stars.

When he stood at the pit's edge and looked upward, Mac-laren saw the sky sharp and black and of an absolute cold. It had a somehow three-dimensional effect; theory said all those crowding suns, blue-white or frosty gold or pale heartless red, were alike at optical infinity, but the mind sensed remoteness beyond remoteness, and whimpered. Nor was the ground un-derfoot a comfort, for it was almost as dark, starlit vision reached a few meters and was gulped down. A chopped-off Milky Way and a rising constellation-the one Maclaren had privately named Risus, the Sneer-told him that a horizon existed, but his animal instincts did not believe it.

He sighed, slapped a glare filter across his faceplate, and began cutting. The atomic hydrogen torch was lurid enough to look upon, but it jostled the stars out of his eyes. He cut rap-idly, ten-kilo slabs which he kicked down into the pit so they wouldn't fuse tight again. The hole itself had originally been blasted, but theCross didn't carry enough explosive for him to mine all his ore that way.

Ore, he reflected, was a joke. How would two men on foot prospect a sterilized world sealed into vacuum a hundred mil-lion years ago? And there would have been little point in it. This planet had boiled once, at least on the surface; and even the metallic core had been heated and churned, quite probably to melting, when crushed atoms expanded to normal dimen-sions. The entire globe must be nearly uniform, a one alloy lump. You took any piece, crushed it, gasified it, ionized it, put it through the electromagnetic isotope separator, and drew forth as much-or, rather, as minutely little-germanium as any other piece would have given you. From the known rate of extraction by such methods you could calculate when you would have four kilograms. The date lay weeks away.

Maclaren finished cutting, shut off his torch and hung it on its generator, and climbed into the bucket of the crane at the pit's edge. His flash-beam threw puddles of light on its walls as he was lowered. At the bottom he moved painfully about, loaded the bucket, and rode back to the surface. A small elec-tric truck waited, he spilled the bucket into its box. And then it was to do again, and still again, until he had a full load.

Thank G.o.d and her dead designers, theCross was well equipped for work on airless surfaces, she carried machines to dig and build and transport. But, of course, she had to. It was her main purpose, to establish a new transceiver station on a new moon; everything else could then come straight from the Solar System.

It had been her purpose.

It still was.

Maclaren climbed wearily onto the truck seat. He and his s.p.a.cesuit had a fourth again their Earth-weight here. His headlights picked out a line of paint leading toward the s.h.i.+p. It had been necessary to blast the pit some distance away, for fear of what ground vibrations might do to the web or the isotope separator.