“Can you tell us more, or are you too busy?”
“I’m afraid I’m needed right now. When Shefcheeshee appears, I know he’ll be eager to explain — perhaps more than you’ll be to listen, after a while. Is there such a thing as overenthusiasm among your people?” Hugh’s translator had no difficulty with the word; he wondered briefly whether there were a Crotonite equivalent. Reekess remained silent, but the Erthuma keyed an emphatic affirmative, followed by appropriate thanks. The native picked up his burden and departed.
The two waited silently; both had plenty to ponder. So there was a sea bottom project having some connection with the work on Darkside — the Solid Ocean of the natives. It was probably wishful thinking, but was somebody actually looking For fossils in the bottom mud? Then was no obvious reason why they shouldn’t form there, if life existed at or bodies settled to such depths and got buried. There should be a constant, though slow, deposition of silicate material — not just from the traces the Habras constantly lost on the inner side of their melting continent, but from the much greater quantities scooped from the little world’s rocky core by glaciers of high-pressure ice flowing from Darkside and distributed as the ice dissolved, changed phase, and otherwise spread itself through the Liquid Ocean.
This should have been going on long before the Habras’ ancestors had arrived, if indeed the creatures were the descendants of colonists. There could reasonably be organic remains below the sea bottom; quite possibly someone was trying to find them. If the Cephallonian were indeed of the enthusiastic type, there might be more to learn here than how good the Naxian doctors were. Hugh did not want to interrupt any more Habras obviously at work, but there were two or three Naxians in sight with no obvious occupation. It might be worth asking them if they could communicate.
Hugh had almost made his mind up to ask, as one of them snaked its way more or less toward the dock where he and Reekess waited, when an interruption occurred. For a moment he almost felt at home.
The alarm was on radio, of course, but there was only one Habra language and his translator handled it perfectly.
“Help below bow section three! The alien swimmer is in trouble!”
Chapter Ten
The Closest Search May Furnish But A Hint
The local workers seemed well trained. People scurried in many directions, but Hugh could see the underlying organization. Every native who was carrying something put it down carefully and took time to make sure it wouldn’t slide, roll, or block pathways. All in diving armor headed for the edge of the water; those not so equipped took up stations at the mooring lines of the submarine, on the upper portions of the hull itself, or along the water’s edge next to mooring bitts, racks of emergency floats, and other items of less obvious but presumably rescue-oriented equipment.
Hugh himself hesitated only a moment before leaping toward the water. As usual, there was a tautness in his stomach as he remembered the five hundred kilometers through which he might sink if things went wrong, but he had spent enough time on and under Habranhan seas to be able to ignore this. Also his brain, if not his lower nervous system, knew that he was equipped for bottom pressures. He could survive down there for a long time, even if—
He pulled his mind sharply away from the thought of being lost in those depths.
He didn’t actually dive in, but sprang to the submarine’s side, obtained a firm grip on its skeletal structure, and began to climb downward. Reekess said nothing. Without breathing equipment she couldn’t follow him; she simply kept out of the way of scurrying natives and waited.
Once submerged, the Erthuma let go of the ship briefly. His buoyancy should still be slightly positive for the liquid air density of the Pits. A moment unsupported in the slightly denser water set him drifting upward and confirmed the belief. He juggled briefly with suit controls and began swimming downward again before they had finished responding. The effort decreased over the next few seconds as cylindrical tanks around his waist and hips drove their enclosed pistons upward, admitting water below and forcing some of the buffering oxygen on the other side back into its storage tank. Hugh could detect the change, and might even have returned to the surface if it had not occurred, but was more concerned with finding the Cephallonian.
He could see well enough. Water was appreciably less transparent to Grendel’s redder-than-Solar light than seemed normal to Erthumoi, but he was still close to the surface. The whole length of the submarine could be distinguished, but he didn’t have to look that far. The being he sought was under the hull beside one of the thruster pods, about as far back from the bow as Hugh had entered the water. It — no, he — did not seem to have panicked; there was no violent thrashing. The Cephallonian might have been doing something with his small and rather inefficient hands, but the great driving muscles of his flukes and after body were relaxed. Two armored Habras hung beside him, working with ropes. Hugh swam closer to get more detail. This revealed itself in slow-motion playback fashion.
The pod was sinking gently away from the hull frame, snapping a final support cable as Hugh watched. The streamlined form of the Cephallonian settled with it, the two-body system twisting slowly to bring the thruster underneath and conceal it from Hugh’s view. He could now see that the swimmer was wearing a fairly complex work harness, and got the impression that the pod had somehow become attached to this and was dragging him away from the surface.
The Habras had closed in and were now also partly hidden beneath their fellow worker, whose body was much longer than theirs — he was far larger than the Cephallonians whom Hugh and his wife had known earlier. Whether this was an individual peculiarity or racial characteristic implying a different world of origin was unimportant at the moment; the fact itself was what had to be faced. It might either help or hinder. Hugh set his own buoyancy a little further toward negative and approached the group as quickly as he could.
“Can’t they get you loose?” he keyed. The two stage code-through-Falgite-to-Cephallonian translation caused some delay in the response.
“Probably not,” the answer came. “I wasn’t expecting them to try very hard.”
“I have a good knife. Is cutting your harness acceptable?”
“No. We don’t want to lose the driver.”
“What can I do?”
“How much buoyancy can you furnish?”
“Only two kilograms-water-equivalent. You could swim upward with more force than that, I’m afraid.”
“Please try, anyway. More support lines are coming; the slower we sink, the easier it will be to get them to us.”
The Erthuma closed the remaining distance between himself and the Cephallonian and secured a one-handed grip on the harness. With the other he twisted his buoyancy control to full positive. As he had feared, the effect on their group sinking rate was very small, though he could feel the tension on his arm.
He wondered briefly how deep they could go before pressure endangered the other, but decided not to ask yet. If that problem became urgent, he could expect to be told. He coded what he considered a more immediate question.
“Can’t you swim upward yourself?”
“Not with the thruster where it is, ahead of my center of buoyancy; I can’t turn upward. The Habras arc trying to shift it closer to my tail without losing all hold on it. Your hands are much more dexterous than mine, and your arms longer than theirs; perhaps your best tactic would be to match buoyancies so as to free both arms, and help them with their rope work.”