Egress was made in silence through the tiny lock. It was essentially a U-shaped liquid trap, fundamentally similar in operation to the main one and deep enough so that the Kwembly’s tilt did not quite spoil its operation. The fact that the outer end was in liquid anyway may have made the difference. Beetchermarlf, emerging directly into the current, was glad of Stak’s steadying grip as he sought anchorage for his own safety line.
A minute later the third member of their group had joined them, and together they clambered the short distance that separated them from the river bottom. This was composed of the rounded rocks which had been visible from the bridge, arranged in an oddly wavelike pattern whose crests extended across the direction of the current. At first glance, Beetchermarlf got the impression that the cruiser had stranded in the trough between two of these waves. Enough of the outside lights were still working to make seeing possible, if not quite ideal.
The trio made their way around the stern to get a look at their vehicle’s underside. ‘While this was much less well lighted, it was obvious at once that there would be a great deal to report to Dondragmer.
The Kwembly had been supported by a set of sixty trucks, each some three feet wide and twice as long, arranged in five longitudinal rows of twelve. All swiveled on casters and were interconnected by a maze of tiller ropes which were Beetchermarlf’s main responsibility. Each of the trucks had a place to install a power unit, and had its own motor consisting of a six-inch-thick shaft whose micro-structure gave it a direct grip on the rotating magnetic field which was one of the forms in which the fusion units could deliver their energy. If no power box was installed, the truck rolled free. At the time of the accident, ten of the Kwembly’s twenty-five converters had been on trucks, arranged in point-forward V patterns fore and aft.
Eighteen trucks from the rear of the cruiser, including all five of the powered ones at that end, were missing.
5: FRYER TO FREEZER
Strictly speaking, all of them weren’t missing. Several could be seen lying on the boulders, evidently dislodged at the time of the final impact. Whether any had gone with the earlier bumps, presumably miles upstream, Beetchermarlf could not guess and was rather afraid to find out. That could be checked later. Inspecting what was left would have to come first. The helmsman set to it.
The front end seemed to have sustained no damage at all; the trucks were still present and their maze of tiller lines in proper condition. Amidships, many of the lines had snapped in spite of the enormous strength of the Mesklinite fiber used in them. Some of the trucks were twisted out of alignment; several, indeed, swung freely to the touch. The pattern of missing parts aft was regular and rather encouraging. Numbering from the port side, Row 1 had lost its last five trucks; Rows 2 and 3 their last four; Row 4 the last three; Row 5, on the starboard side, its last two. This suggested that they had all yielded to the same impact, which had wiped diagonally across the bottom of the hull; and since some of the detached units were in the neighborhood, there seemed a good chance that they all would be.
The inspectors were surprised at how little damage had been done by the trucks tearing away. Beetchermarlf and his companions had had nothing to do with the design of the Kwembly and her sister machines. None of them had more than the roughest idea of the sort of thinking which had been involved. They had never considered the problems inherent in building a machine powered by the most sophisticated energy sources ever developed, but operated by beings from a culture still in the muscle-and-wind stage; beings who would be cut off from any repair and replacement facilities once they were on Dhrawn. This was, the reason the steering was done by tiller and rope rather than by powered selsyns or similar devices; why the air locks were so simple, and not completely foolproof; why the life-support system was not only manually operated (except for the lights which kept the plants alive) but had even been designed and built by Mesklinite scientists and technicians.
A few hundred of the beings had received an extensive body of alien education, though no attempt had been made to spread the new knowledge through the Mesklinite culture. Nearly all of the “college graduates” were now on Dhrawn, together with recruits like Beetchermarlf; mostly young, reasonably intelligent volunteers from among the sailors of Barlennan’s maritime nation. These were the people who would have to perform any repairs and all regular maintenance on the land-cruisers, and this fact had to be kept constantly in the foreground of the designers’ minds. Designing vehicles capable of covering thousands of miles of Dhrawn’s environment in a reasonable length of time, and at the same time reasonably safely under Mesklinite handling, had inevitably resulted in equipment with startling qualities. Beetchermarlf should not have been surprised either that the pieces of his cruiser went back together so readily, or that the cruisers had suffered so little damage.
Of course, the intelligence of the Mesklinites had been taken into account. It was the main reason for not depending on robots: these had proved unsatisfactory in the early days of space exploration. Mesklinite intelligence was obviously comparable to that of human beings, Drommians, or Paneshks: a fact surprising in itself, since all four planets appeared to have evolved their life forms over widely different lengths of geological time. It was also fairly certain that Mesklinites were much longer-lived, on the average, than human beings, though Mesklinites were oddly reluctant to discuss this; indeed, what this would mean in terms of their general competence was as problematic as Dhrawn itself. It had been a risky project from all angles, with most of the risk being taken by the Mesklinites. The giant barge drifting in orbit near the human station, which was supposed to be able to evacuate the entire Settlement in emergency, was little more than a gesture, especially for the beings afield in the land-cruisers.
None of this was in the minds of the three sailors inspecting the Kwembly’s damage. They were simply surprised and delighted to find that the lost trucks had merely popped out of the sockets in which they normally swiveled and into which they could apparently be replaced with little trouble, provided they could be found. With this problem settled to his satisfaction, Beetchermarlf made a brief cast over the river bottom to the limits imposed by the safety lines and found twelve of the trucks within that radius. Some of these were damaged: tracks broken or with missing links; bearing wheels cracked; a few axles bent. The three gathered all the material they could reach and transport and brought it back to the Kwembly’s stern. The helmsman considered doubling up on the safety lines and increasing their search radius but decided to report to Dondragmer and get his approval first. Indeed, the helmsman was a bit surprised that the captain had not appeared earlier, in view of his announced intention of checking outside.
He found the reason when he and his companions went back around the stern to the lock. Dondragmer, his two companions of the original sortie and six more crewmen, who had evidently been summoned in the meantime, were near the middle of the Kwembly laboring to remove boulders from the region of the main air lock.
The breathing suits had no special communication equipment, and the transmissive matching between their hydrogen-argon filling and the surrounding liquid was extremely poor; but the Mesklinite voice, built around a swimming siphon rather than a set of lungs (the hydrogen-using midgets lacked lungs) was another thing which had bothered human biologists. The helmsman caught his captain’s attention with a deep hoot and gestured him to follow around the stern of the cruiser. Dondragmer assumed that the matter was important and came along after directing the others to continue their work. One look and a few sentences from Beetchermarlf brought him abreast of the situation.