As a result, Shar’s imperfect memory of the contents of the history plates, plus the constant and millenial doubt as to the accuracy of the various translations, proved finally to be the worst obstacle to progress on the spaceship itself.
“Men must paddle before they can swim,” Lavon observed belatedly, and Shar was forced to agree with him.
Obviously, whatever the ancients had known about spaceship construction, very little of that knowledge was usable to a people still trying to build its first spaceship from scratch. In retrospect, it was not surprising that the great hulk still rested incomplete upon its platform above the sand boulders, exuding a musty odor of wood steadily losing its strength, two generations after its flat bottom had been-laid down.
The fat-faced young man who headed the strike delegation to Shar’s chambers was Phil XX, a man two generations younger than Shar, four younger than Lavon. There were crow’s-feet at the corners of his eyes, which made him look both like a querulous old man and like an infant spoiled in the spore.
“We’re calling a halt to this crazy project,” he said bluntly. “We’ve slaved away our youth on it, but now that we’re our own masters, it’s over, that’s all. Over.”
“Nobody’s compelled you,” Lavon said angrily.
“Society does; our parents do,” a gaunt member of the delegation said. “But now we’re going to start living in the real world. Everybody these days knows that there’s no other world but this one. You oldsters can hang on to your superstitions if you like. We don’t intend to.”
Baffled, Lavon looked over at Shar. The scientist smiled and said, “Let them go, Lavon. We have no use for the faint-hearted.”
The fat-faced young man flushed. “You can’t insult us into going back to work. We’re through. Build your own ship to noplace!”
“All right,” Lavon said evenly. “Go on, beat it. Don’t stand around here orating about it. You’ve made your decision and we’re not interested in your self-justifications. Good-bye.”
The fat-faced young man evidently still had quite a bit of heroism to dramatize which Lavon’s dismissal had short-circuited. An examination of Lavon’s stony face, however, seemed to convince him that he had to take his victory as he found it. He and the delegation trailed in-gloriously out the archway.
“Now what?” Lavon asked when they had gone. “I must admit, Shar, that I would have tried to persuade them. We do need the workers, after all.”
“Not as much as they need us,” Shar said tranquilly. “I know all those young men. I think they’ll be astonished at the runty crops their fields will produce next season, after they have to breed them without my advice. Now, how many volunteers have you got for the crew of the ship?”
“Hundreds. Every youngster of the generation after Phil’s wants to go along. Phil’s wrong about that segment of the populace, at least. The project catches the imagination of the very young.”
“Did you give them any encouragement?”
“Sure,” Lavon said. “I told them we’d call on them if they were chosen. But you can’t take that seriously! We’d do badly to displace our picked group of specialists with youths who have enthusiasm and nothing else.”
“That’s not what I had in mind, Lavon. Didn’t I see a Noc in these chambers somewhere? Oh, there he is, asleep in the dome. Noc!”
The creature stirred its tentacle lazily.
“Noc, I’ve a message,” Shar called. “The protos are to tell all men that those who wish to go to the next world with the spaceship must come to the staging area right away. Say that we can’t promise to take everyone, but that only those who help us to build the ship will be considered at all.”
The Noc curled its tentacle again, and appeared to go back to sleep.
Lavon turned from the arrangement of speaking-tube megaphones which was his control board and looked at the Para. “One last try,” he said. “Will you give us back the history plates?”
“No, Lavon. We have never denied you anything before, but this we must.”
“You’re going with us though, Para. Unless you give us back the knowledge we need, you’ll lose your life if we lose ours.”
“What is one Para?” the creature said. “We are all alike. This cell will die; but the protos need to know how you fare on this journey. We believe you should make it without the plates, for in no other way can we assess the real importance of the plates.”
“Then you admit you still have them. What if you can’t communicate with your fellows once we’re out in space? How do you know that water isn’t essential to your telepathy?”
The proto was silent. Lavon stared at it a moment, then turned deliberately back to the speaking tubes. “Everyone hang on,” he said. He felt shaky. “We’re about to start. Stravol, is the ship sealed?”
“As far as I can tell, Lavon.”
Lavon shifted to another megaphone. He took a deep breath. Already the water seemed stifling, although the ship hadn’t moved.
“Ready with one-quarter power ... One, two, three, go.”
The whole ship jerked and settled back into place again. The raphe diatoms along the under hull settled into their niches, their jelly treads turning against broad endless belts of crude nematode leather. Wooden gears creaked, stepping up the slow power of the creatures, transmitting it to the sixteen axles of the ship’s wheels.
The ship rocked and began to roll slowly along the sandbar. Lavon looked tensely through the mica port. The world flowed painfully past him. The ship canted and began to climb the slope. Behind him, he could feel the electric silence of Shar, Para, and the two alternate pilots, Than and Stravol, as if their gaze were stabbing directly through his body and on out the port. The world looked different, now that he was leaving it. How had he missed all this beauty before?
The slapping of the endless belts and the squeaking and groaning of the gears and axles grew louder as the slope steepened. The ship continued to climb, lurching. Around it, squadrons of men and protos dipped and wheeled, escorting it toward the sky.
Gradually the sky lowered and pressed down toward the top of the ship.
“A little more work from your diatoms, Tanol,” Lavon said. “Boulder ahead.” The ship swung ponderously. “All right, slow them up again. Give us a shove from your side, Tol—no, that’s too much—there, that’s it. Back to normal; you’re still turning us! Tanol, give us one burst to line us up again. Good. All right, steady drive on all sides. It shouldn’t be long now.”
“How can you think in webs like that?” the Para wondered behind him.
“I just do, that’s all. It’s the way men think. Overseers, a little more thrust now; the grade’s getting steeper.”
The gears groaned. The ship nosed up. The sky brightened in Lavon’s face. Despite himself, he began to be frightened. His lungs seemed to burn, and in his mind he felt his long fall through nothingness toward the chill slap of the water as if he were experiencing it for the first time. His skin itched and burned. Could he go up there again? Up there into the burning void, the great gasping agony where no life should go?
The sandbar began to level out and the going became a little easier. Up here, the sky was so close that the lumbering motion of the huge ship disturbed it. Shadows of wavelets ran across the sand. Silently, the thick-barreled bands of blue-green algae drank in the light and converted it to oxygen, writhing in their slow mindless dance just under the long mica skylight which ran along the spine of the ship. In the hold, beneath the latticed corridor and cabin floors, whirring Vortae kept the ship’s water in motion, fueling themselves upon drifting organic particles.