Part 2 (1/2)

The landing boat was aground, having removed the two pa.s.sengers. It would come back. n.o.body on the s.h.i.+p wanted to stay aground, because they knew the conditions and the situation below--unbearable heat and the complete absence of hope. But n.o.body had anything to do! The s.h.i.+p had been maintained in standard operating condition during its two-months'

voyage from Trent to here. No repairs or overhaulings were needed. There was no maintenance-work to speak of. There would be only stand-by watches until something happened. There would be nothing to do on those watches. There would be off-watch time for twenty-one out of every twenty-four hours, and no purposeful activity to fill even half an hour of it. In a matter of--probably--years, the _Warlock_ should receive aid. She might be towed out of her orbit to s.p.a.ce in which the Lawlor drive could function, or the crew might simply be taken off. But meanwhile, those on board were as completely frustrated as the colony.

They could not do anything at all to help themselves.

In one fas.h.i.+on the crewmen were worse off than the colonists. The colonists had at least the colorful prospect of death before them. They could prepare for it in their several ways. But the members of the _Warlock_'s crew had nothing ahead but tedium.

The skipper faced the future with extreme, grim distaste.

The ride to the colony was torment. Aletha rode behind her cousin on the saddle-blanket, and apparently suffered little if at all. But Bordman could only ride in the ground-car's cargo s.p.a.ce, along with the sack of mail from the s.h.i.+p. The ground was unbelievably rough and the jolting intolerable. The heat was literally murderous. In the metal cargo s.p.a.ce, the temperature reached a hundred and sixty degrees in the suns.h.i.+ne--and given enough time, food will cook in no more heat than that. Of course a man has been known to enter an oven and stay there while a roast was cooked, and to come out alive. But the oven wasn't throwing him violently about or bringing sun-heated--blue-white-sun heated--metal to press his heat-suit against him.

The suit did make survival possible, but that was all. The contents of its canteens gave out just before arrival, and for a short time Bordman had only sweat for his suit to work with. It kept him alive by forced ventilation, but he arrived in a state of collapse. He drank the iced salt water they gave him and went to bed. He'd get back his strength with a proper sodium level in his blood. But he slept for twelve hours straight.

When he got up, he was physically normal again, but abysmally ashamed.

It did no good to remind himself that Xosa II was rated minimum-comfort cla.s.s D--a blue-white sun and a mean temperature of one hundred and ten degrees. Africans could take such a climate--with night-relief quarters.

Amerinds could do steel construction work in the open, protected only by insulated shoes and gloves. But Bordman could not venture out-of-doors except in a heat-suit. He couldn't stay long then. It was not a weakness. It was a matter of genetics. But he was ashamed.

Aletha nodded to him when he found the Project Engineer's office. It occupied one of the hulls in which colony-establishment materials had been lowered by rocket power. There were forty of the hulls, and they had been emptied and arranged for inter-communication in three separate communities, so that an individual could change his quarters and ordinary a.s.sociates from time to time and colony fever--frantic irritation with one's companions--was minimized.

Aletha sat at a desk, busily making notes from a loose leaf volume before her. The wall behind the desk was fairly lined with similar volumes.

”I made a spectacle of myself!” said Bordman, bitterly.

”Not at all!” Aletha a.s.sured him. ”It could happen to anybody. I wouldn't do too well on Timbuk.”

There was no answer to that. Timbuk was essentially a jungle planet, barely emerging from the carboniferous stage. Its colonists thrived because their ancestors had lived on the sh.o.r.es of the Gulf of Guinea, on Earth. But Anglos did not find its climate healthful, nor would many other races. Amerinds died there quicker than most.

”Ralph's on the way here now,” added Aletha. ”He and Dr. Chuka were out picking a place to leave the records. The sand dunes here are terrible, you know. When an explorer-s.h.i.+p does come to find out what's happened to us, these buildings could be covered up completely. Any place could be.

It isn't easy to pick a record-cache that's quite sure to be found.”

”When,” said Bordman skeptically, ”there's n.o.body left alive to point it out. Is that it?”

”That's it,” agreed Aletha. ”It's pretty bad all around. I didn't plan to die just yet.”

Her voice was perfectly normal. Bordman snorted. As a senior Colonial Survey officer, he'd been around. But he'd never yet known a human colony to be extinguished when it was properly equipped and after a proper pre-settlement survey. He'd seen panic, but never real cause for a matter-of-fact acceptance of doom.

There was a clanking noise outside the hulk which was the Project Engineer's headquarters. Bordman couldn't see clearly through the filtered ports. He reached over and opened a door. The brightness outside struck his eyes like a blow. He blinked them shut instantly and turned away. But he'd seen a glistening, caterwheel ground car stopping not far from the doorway.

He stood wiping tears from his light-dazzled eyes as footsteps sounded outside. Aletha's cousin came in, followed by a huge man with remarkably dark skin. The dark man wore eyegla.s.ses with a curiously thick, corklike nosepiece to insulate the necessary metal of the frame from his skin. It would blister if it touched bare flesh.

”This is Dr. Chuka,” said Redfeather pleasantly, ”Mr. Bordman. Dr.

Chuka's the director of mining and mineralogy here.”

Bordman shook hands with the ebony-skinned man. He grinned, showing startlingly white teeth. Then he began to s.h.i.+ver.

”It's like a freeze-box in here,” he said in a deep voice. ”I'll get a robe and be with you.”

He vanished through a doorway, his teeth chattering audibly. Aletha's cousin took half a dozen deliberate deep breaths and grimaced.