“If you’ll stand by a moment, I’ll be out with the radios,” Lackland said. The commander had not noticed his departure, but the Flyer was no longer in the room. “Mack will drive the crawler over here — you can watch it come while I’m getting into armor.”
Actually Barlennan was able to watch only a portion of the drive. He saw the rocket’s cargo lock swing open and the vehicle emerge; he got a sufficiently good look at the crawler to understand everything about it — he thought — except what made its caterpillar treads move, It was big, easily big enough to hold several of the Flyer’s race unless too much of its interior was full of machinery. Like the dome, it had numerous and large windows; through one of these in the front the commander could see the armored figure of another Flyer, who was apparently controlling it. Whatever drove the machine did not make enough noise to be audible across the mile of space that still separated it from the dome.
It covered very little of that distance before the sun set, and details ceased to be visible. Esstes, the smaller sun, was still in the sky and brighter than the full moon of Earth, but Barlennan’s eyes had their limitations. An intense beam of light projected from the crawler itself along its path, and consequently straight toward the dome, did not help either. Barlennan simply waited. After all, it was still too far for really good examination even by daylight, and would undoubtedly be at the Hill by sunrise.
Even though he might have to wait, of course; the Flyers might object to the sort of examination he really wanted to give their machinery.
III: OFF THE GROUND
The tank’s arrival, Lackland’s emergence from the dome’s main air lock, and the rising of Belne all took place at substantially the same moment* The vehicle stopped only a couple of yards from the platf orln on which Barlennan was crouched. Its driver also emerged; and the two men stood and talked briefly beside the Mesklinite. The latter rather wondered that they did not return to the inside of the dome to lie down, since both were rather obviously laboring under Mesklin’s gravity; but the newcomer refused Lackland’s invitation.
“I’d like to be sociable,” he said in answer to it, “but honestly, Charlie, would you stay on this ghastly mudball a moment longer than you had to?”
“Well, I could do pretty much the same work from Toorey, or from a ship in a free orbit for that matter,” retorted Lackland. “I think personal contact means a good deal. I still want to find out more about Barlennan’s people — it seems to me that we’re hardly giving him as much as we expect to get, and it would be nice to find out if there were anything more we could do. Furthermore, he’s in a rather dangerous situation himself, and having one of us here might make quite a difference — to both of us.”
“I don’t follow you.”
“Barlennan is a tramp captain — a sort of free-lance explorer-trader. He’s completely out of the normal areas inhabited and traveled through by his people. He is remaining here during the southern winter, when the evaporating north polar cap makes storms which have to be seen to be believed here in the equatorial regions — storms which are almost as much out of his experience as ours. If anything happens to him, stop and think of our chances of meeting another contact!
“Remember, he normally lives in a gravity field from two hundred to nearly seven hundred times as strong as Earth’s. We certainly won’t follow him home to meet his relatives! Furthermore, there probably aren’t a hundred of his race who are not only in the same business but courageous enough to go so far from their natural homes. Of those hundred, what ‘are our chances of meeting another? Granting that this ocean is the one they frequent most, this little arm of it, from which this bay is an offshoot, is six thousand miles long and a third as wide — with a very crooked shore line. As for spotting one, at sea or ashore, from above — well, Barlennan’s Bree is about forty feet long and a third as wide, and is one of their biggest oceangoing ships. Scarcely any of it is more than three inches above the water, besides.
“No, Mack, our meeting Barlennan was the wildest of coincidences; and I’m not counting on another. Staying under three gravities for five months or so, until the southern spring, will certainly be worth it. Of course, if you want to gamble our chances of recovering nearly two billion dollars’ worth of apparatus on the results of a search over a strip of planet a thousand miles wide and something over a hundred and fifty thousand long — ”
“You’ve made your point,” the other human being admitted, “but I’m still glad it’s you and not me. Of course, maybe if I knew Barlennan better — ” Both men turned to the tiny, caterpillarlike form crouched on the waist-high platform.
“Barl, I trust you will forgive my rudeness in not introducing Wade McLellan,” Lackland said. “Wade, this is Barlennan, captain of the Bree, and a master shipman of his world-he has not told me that, but the fact that he is here is sufficient evidence.”
“I am glad to meet you, Pfyer McLellan,” the Mesklinite responded. “No apology is necessary, and I assumed that your conversation was meant for my ears as well.” He performed the standard pincer-opening gesture of greeting. “I had already appreciated the good fortune for both of us which our meeting represents, and only hope that I can fulfill my part of the bargain as well as I am sure you will yours.”
“You speak English remarkably well,” commented McLellan. “Have you really been learning it for less than six weeks?”
“I am not sure how long your ‘week’ is, but it is less than thirty-five hundred days since I met your friend,” returned the commander. “I am a good linguist, of course — it is necessary in my business; and the films that Charles showed helped very much.”
“It is rather lucky that your voice could make all the sounds of our language. We sometimes have trouble that way.”
“That, or something like it, is why I learned your English rather than the other way around. Many of the sounds we use are much too shrill for your vocal cords, I understand.” Barlennan carefully refrained from mentioning that much of his normal conversation was also too high-pitched for human ears. After all, Lackland might not have noticed it yet, and the most honest of traders thinks at least twice before revealing all his advantages. “I imagine that Charles has learned some of our language, nevertheless, by watching and listening to us through the radio now on the Bree.”
“Very little,” confessed Lackland. “You seem, from what little I have seen, to have an extremely well-trained crew. A great deal of your regular activity is done without orders, and I can make nothing of the conversations you sometimes have with some of your men, which are not accompanied by any action.”
“You mean when I am talking to Dondragmer or Merkoos? They are my first and second officers, and the ones I talk to most.”
“I hope you will not feel insulted at this, but I am quite unable to tell one of your people from another. I simply am not familiar enough with your distinguishing characteristics.”
Barlennan almost laughed.
“In my case, it is even worse. I am not entirely sure whether I have seen you without artificial covering or not.”
“Well, that is carrying us a long way from business — we’ve used up a lot of daylight as it is. Mack, I assume you want to get back to the rocket and out where weight means nothing and men are balloons. When you get there, be sure that the receiver-transmitters for each of these four sets are placed close enough together so that one will register on another. I don’t suppose it’s worth the trouble of tying them in electrically, but these folks are going to use them for a while as contact between separate parties, and the sets are on different frequencies. Barl, I’ve left the radios by the air lock. Apparently the sensible program would be for me to put you and the radios on top of the crawler, take Mack over to the rocket, and then drive you and the apparatus over to the Bree.”