Part 1 (2/2)

”_Mr. Bordman. Miss Redfeather. According to advices from the ground, the s.h.i.+p may have to stay in orbit for a considerable time. You will accordingly be landed by boat. Will you make yourselves ready, please, and report to the boat-blister?_” The voice paused and added, ”_Hand luggage only, please._”

Aletha's eyes brightened. Bordman felt the shocked incredulity of a man accustomed to routine when routine is impossibly broken. Of course survey s.h.i.+ps made boat landings from orbit, and colony s.h.i.+ps let down robot hulls by rocket when there was as yet no landing grid for the handling of a s.h.i.+p. But never before in his experience had an ordinary freighter, on a routine voyage to a colony ready for its final degree-of-completion survey, ever landed anybody by boat.

”This is ridiculous!” said Bordman, fuming.

”Maybe it's adventure,” said Aletha. ”I'll pack.”

She disappeared into her cabin. Bordman hesitated. Then he went into his own. The colony on Xosa II had been established two years ago. Minimum comfort conditions had been realized within six months. A temporary landing grid for light supply s.h.i.+ps was up within a year. It had permitted stock-piling, and it had been taken down to be rebuilt as a permanent grid with every possible contingency provided for. The eight months since the last s.h.i.+p landing was more than enough for the building of the gigantic, spidery, half-mile-high structure which would handle this planet's interstellar commerce. There was no excuse for an emergency! A boat landing was nonsensical!

But he surveyed the contents of his cabin. Most of the cargo of the _Warlock_ was smelter equipment which was to complete the outfitting of the colony. It was to be unloaded first. By the time the s.h.i.+p's holds were wholly empty, the smelter would be operating. The s.h.i.+p would wait for a full cargo of pig metal. Bordman had expected to live in this cabin while he worked on the survey he'd come to make, and to leave again with the s.h.i.+p.

Now he was to go aground by boat. He fretted. The only emergency equipment he could possibly need was a heat-suit. He doubted the urgency of that. But he packed some clothing for indoors, and then defiantly included his specbook and the volumes of definitive data to which specifications for structures and colonial establishments always referred. He'd get to work on his report immediately he landed.

He went out of the pa.s.senger's lounge to the boat-blister. An engineer's legs projected from the boat port. The engineer withdrew, with a strip of tape from the boat's computer. He compared it dourly with a similar strip from the s.h.i.+p's figurebox. Bordman consciously acted according to the best traditions of pa.s.sengers.

”What's the trouble?” he asked.

”We can't land,” said the engineer shortly.

He went away--according to the tradition by which s.h.i.+ps' crews are always scornful of pa.s.sengers.

Bordman scowled. Then Aletha came, carrying a not-too-heavy bag. Bordman put it in the boat, disapproving of the crampedness of the craft. But this wasn't a lifeboat. It was a landing boat. A lifeboat had Lawlor drive and could travel light-years, but in the place of rockets and rocket fuel it had air-purifiers and water-recovery units and food-stores. It couldn't land without a landing grid aground, but it could get to a civilized planet. This landing boat could land without a grid, but its air wouldn't last long.

”Whatever's the matter,” said Bordman darkly, ”it's incompetence somewhere!”

But he couldn't figure it out. This was a cargo s.h.i.+p. Cargo s.h.i.+ps neither took off nor landed under their own power. It was too costly of fuel they would have to carry. So landing grids used local power--which did not have to be lifted--to heave s.h.i.+ps out into s.p.a.ce, and again used local power to draw them to ground again. Therefore s.h.i.+ps carried fuel only for actual s.p.a.ce-flight, which was economy. Yet landing grids had no moving parts, and while they did have to be monstrous structures they actually drew power from planetary ionospheres. So with no moving parts to break down and no possibility of the failure of a power source--landing grids couldn't fail! So there couldn't be an emergency to make a s.h.i.+p ride orbit around a planet which had a landing grid!

The engineer came back. He carried a mail sack full of letter-reels. He waved his hand. Aletha crawled into the landing-boat port. Bordman followed. Four people, with a little crowding, could have gotten into the little s.h.i.+p. Three pretty well filled it. The engineer followed them and sealed the port.

”Sealed off,” he said into the microphone before him.

The exterior-pressure needle moved halfway across the dial. The interior-pressure needle stayed steady.

”All tight,” said the engineer.

The exterior-pressure needle flicked to zero. There were clanking sounds. The long halves of the boat-blister stirred and opened, and abruptly the landing boat was in an elongated cup in the hull-plating, and above them there were many, many stars. The enormous disk of a nearby planet floated into view around the hull. It was monstrous and blindingly bright. It was of a tawny color, with great, irregular areas of yellow and patches of bluishness. But most of it was the color of sand. And all its colors varied in shade--some places were lighter and some darker--and over at one edge there was blinding whiteness which could not be anything but an ice cap. But Bordman knew that there was no ocean or sea or lake on all this whole planet, and the ice cap was more nearly h.o.a.rfrost than such mile-deep glaciation as would be found at the poles of a maximum-comfort world.

”Strap in,” said the engineer over his shoulder. ”No-gravity coming, and then rocket-push. Settle your heads.”

Bordman irritably strapped himself in. He saw Aletha busy at the same task, her eyes s.h.i.+ning. Without warning, there came a sensation of acute discomfort. It was the landing boat detaching itself from the s.h.i.+p and the diminishment of the s.h.i.+p's closely-confined artificial-gravity field. That field suddenly dropped to nothingness, and Bordman had the momentary sickish dizziness that flicked-off gravity always produces. At the same time his heart pounded unbearably in the instinctive, racial-memory reaction to the feel of falling.

Then roarings. He was thrust savagely back against his seat. His tongue tried to slide back into his throat. There was an enormous oppression on his chest. He found himself thinking panicky profanity.

Simultaneously the vision ports went black, because they were out of the shadow of the s.h.i.+p. The landing boat turned--but there was no sensation of centrifugal force--and they were in a vast obscurity with merely a dim phantom of the planetary surface to be seen. But behind them a blue-white sun shone terribly. Its light was warm--hot--even though it came through the polarized s.h.i.+elding ports.

”Did ... did you say,” panted Aletha happily--breathless because of the acceleration--”that there weren't any adventures?”

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