were still working in the after end of the room; elsewhere the compartment was clean.
Matt climbed to the pilot's seat and started inspecting. He noticed first that the sponge-rubber eyeguards for the infrared viewer were missing. This was not important, but he wondered what had happened to them-did the little folk have the vice of souvenir snitching? He filed away the suspicion, and attempted a dry run on the controls, without firing the jet.
Nothing operated-nothing at all.
He looked the board over more carefully. To a casual inspection it was clean, bright, in perfect order, but he now perceived many little pits and specks. He dug at one with a fingernail, something came away. He worked at
it a bit more and produced a tiny hole into the interior of the control board. It gave him a sick feeling at the pit of his stomach. "Say, Tex-come here a minute. I've got something."
"You think you've got something," Tex answered in muffled tones. "Wait till you've seen this."
He found Tex with a wrench in his hand and a cover plate off the gyro compartment. "After what happened to the Gary I decided to check this first. Did you ever see such a mess?" ~~
The mud had gotten in. The gyros, although shut down, were of course still spinning when the ship had gone into the sink-hole and normally would have coasted for days; they should still have been spinning when Tex removed the cover. Instead they had ground to a stop against the mud- burned to a stop.
"We had better call Oscar," Matt said dully.
With Oscar's help they surveyed the mess. Every instrument, every piece of electronic equipment had been invaded. Non-metallic materials were missing completely; thin metal sheets such as instrument cases were riddled with pinholes. "I can't understand what did it," Oscar protested, almost in tears.
Matt asked the Venerian in charge of the work. She did not understand him at first; he pointed out the pinholes, whereupon she- took a lump of the jelled mud and mash it flat. With a slender finger she carefully separated o what seemed to be a piece of white string, a couple inches long. "This is the source of thy troubles."
"Know what it is, Oz?"
"Some sort of worm. I don't recognize it. But I wouldn’t t expect to; the Polar Regions are nothing like this, thank goodness." "
"I suppose we might as well call off the working party.
"Let's don't jump the gun. There might be some way to salvage the mess. We've got to."
"Not a chance. The gyros alone are enough. You can't raise ship in a wingless job without gyros. It's impossible."
"Maybe we could clean them up and get them to working."
"Maybe you could-I can't. The mud got to the bearings,
Oz."
Jensen agreed regretfully. The gyros, the finest precision equipment in a ship, were no better than their bearings. Even an instrument maker in a properly equipped shop would have thrown up his hands at gyros abused as these had been.
"We've at least got to salvage some electronic equipment and jury-rig some sort .of a sending set. We've got to get a. message through." \|
"You've seen it. What do you think?" I
"Well-we'll pick out the stuff that seems in the best shape| and take it back with us. They'll help us with the stuff."
"What sort of shape will it be in after an hour or so in the water? No, Oz, the thing to do is to lock up the door, once the last of the filth is out and come back and work here."
"Okay, well do that." Oscar called to Tex, who was still snooping around. He arrived swearing.
"What now, Tex?" Oscar asked wearily.
"I thought maybe we could at least take some civilized food back with us, but those confounded worms bored into the cans. Every ration in the ship is spoiled."
"Is that all?"
" 'Is that all? Is that all the man says! What do you want? Flood, pestilence, and earthquakes?"
But it was not all-further inspection showed another thing which would have dismayed them had they not already been as low in spirit as they could get. The jeep's jet ran on liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen. The fuel tanks, insulated and protected from direct radiation, could retain fuel for long periods, but the warm mud had reached them and heated them; the expanding gases had bled out through relief valves. The jeep was out of fuel.
Oscar looked this situation over stonily. "I wish the Gary had been chemically powered," he finally commented.
"What of it?" Matt answered. "We couldn't raise ship if we had all the juice this side of Jupiter."
The mother-of-many had to be shown before she was convinced that there was anything wrong with the ship. Even then, she seemed only half convinced and somehow vexed with the- cadets for being unsatisfied with the gift of their ship back. Oscar spent much of the return journey trying to repair his political fences with her.
Oscar ate no dinner that night. Even Tex only picked at his food and did not touch his harmonica afterwards. Matt spent the evening silently sitting out a watch in Thurlow's room.
The mother-(c)f-many sent for all three of them the next morning. After formal exchange of greetings she commenced, "Little mother, is it true that thy Gary is indeed dead, like the other Gary?"
"It is true, gracious mother."
"Is it true that without a Gary thou canst not find thy way back to thine own people?"
"It is true, wise mother of many; the jungle would destroy us."
She stopped and gestured to one of her court. The "daughter" trotted to her with a bundle half as big as the bearer. The city mother took it and invited, or commanded, the cadets to- join her on the dais. She commenced unwrapping. The object inside seemed to have more bandages than a mummy. At long last she had it uncovered and held out to them. "Is this thine?"
It was a large book. On the cover, in large ornate letters, was:
LOG
of
the
Astarte
Tex looked at it and said, "Great leaping balk of fire! It can't be."
Matt stared and whispered, "It must be. The lost first expedition. They didn't fad-they got here."
Oscar stared and said nothing at all until the city mother repeated her question impatiently. "Is this thine?"
"Huh? What? Oh, sure! Wise and gracious mother, this thing belonged to my 'mother's mother's mother.' We are her 'daughters'"
"Then it is thine."
Oscar took it from, her and gingerly opened the brittle pages. They stared at the original entry for "raise ship"-but most especially at the year entry in the date column-"1971." "Holy Moses!" breathed Tex. "Look at that-just look at it. More than a hundred years ago."
They thumbed through it. There was page after page of one line entries of "free fall, position according to plan" which they skipped over rapidly, except for one: "Christmas day. Carols were sung after the mid-day meal."
It was the entries after grounding they were after. They were forced to skim them as the mother-of-many was beginning to show impatience: "- climate no worse than the most extreme terrestrial tropics in the rainy season, the dominant life form seems to be a large amphibian. This planet is definitely possible of colonization."
"-the amphibians have considerable intelligence and seem to talk with each other. They are friendly and an attempt is being made to bridge the semantic gap."
"Margraves has contracted an infection, apparently fun-goid, which is unpleasantly reminiscent of leprosy. The surgeon is treating it experimentally."
"-after the funeral muster Hargraves' room was sterilized at 400°."
The handwriting changed shortly thereafter. The city mother was growing so obviously discontented that they glanced only at the last two entries: "- Johnson continues to fail, but the natives are very helpful-"
"-my left hand is now useless. I have made up my mind to decommission the ship and take my chances in the hands of the natives. I shall take this log with me and add to it, if possible."
The handwriting was firm and clear; it was their own eyes that blurred it.
The mother-of-many immediately ordered up the party used to ferry the humans in and out of the city. She was not disposed to stop to talk and, once the journey began, there was no opportunity to until they reached dry land.