15: ESSENCE
“It boils down to this,” Aucoin said from the head of the table. “We have the choice of sending down the barge, or not. If we don’t, the Kwembly and the two Mesklinites aboard her are lost, and Dondragmer and the rest of her crew are out of action until a rescue cruiser such as the Kalliff can reach them from the Settlement. Unfortunately, if we do try to land the barge there’s a good chance that it won’t help. We don’t know why the ground gave under the Kwembly, and have no assurance that the same thing won’t happen anywhere else in the vicinity. Losing the barge would be awkward. Even if we first landed near Dondragmer’s camp and transferred him and his crew to the cruiser, we might lose the barge and there is no assurance that the crew could repair the Kwembly. Beetchermarlfs report makes me doubt it. He says he has found and sealed the major leaks, but he’s still getting oxygen inside the hull from time to time. Several of his life-support tanks have been poisoned by it. So far he has been able to clean them out each time and restock them from the others, but he can’t keep going forever unless he stops the last of these leaks. Also, neither he nor anyone else has made any concrete suggestion for getting that cruiser loose from the muck or whatever it’s stuck in. “There is another good argument against landing the barge. If we use remote, live control, there is the sixty-second reaction lag, which would make handling anywhere near the ground really impossible. It would be possible to program its computer to handle a landing, but the risks of that were proved the hard way the first time anyone landed away from Earth. You might as well give the Mesklinites a quick lesson in flying the thing for themselves!”
“Don’t try to make that last sound too silly, Alan,” Easy pointed out gently. “The Kwembly is merely the first of the cruisers to get into what looks like final trouble. Dhrawn is a very big world, with very little known about it, and I suspect we’re going to run out of land-cruisers for rescue or any other purpose sooner or later. Also, even I know that the barge controls are computer-coupled, with push-the-way-you-want-to-go operators. I admit that even so, the chances are ten to one or worse that anyone trying a ground-to-ground flight with that machine on Dhrawn without previous experience would kill himself, but do Beetchermarlf and Takoorch have even that much chance of survival on any other basis?? “I think they do,” replied Aucoin quietly. “How, in the name of all that’s sensible?” snapped Mersereau. “Here all along we’ve—” Easy held up her hand, and either the gesture or the expression on her face caused Boyd to fall silent. “What other procedure which you could conscientiourly recommend would stand any real chance of saving either the Kwembly herself, or her two helmsmen, or the rest of Dondragmer’s crew?” she asked. Aucoin had the grace to flush deeply, but he answered steadily enough. “I mentioned it earlier, as Boyd remembers,” he said. “Sending the Kalliff from the Settlement to pick them up.” The words were followed by some seconds of silence, while expressions of amusement flitted across the faces around the table. Eventually Ib Hoffman spoke. “Do you suppose Barlennan will approve?” he asked innocently.