“It’s a pity you didn’t see everything along your path. You could have described it, and I wouldn’t need to ride another robot; I could follow on foot.”
“Down the slope where I couldn’t keep from falling and into this cavern from the top?”
“With rope, and tools to secure it along the way, sure.” “I’m afraid that even if I’d seen enough, I wouldn’t remember it with anything like your standards. I hate to do it to Joe, but I think another robot is the answer.”
“Oh, yes. We’re picking one up right now. Joe has gone out for it and commanded the slaves to come back as quickly as possible. We should be at the Molly-trap in a few more minutes.” “Joe?”
“Yes, Molly?”
“It didn’t take you so long to decide which robot to use this time, did it?”
There was the barest hesitation before the Nethneen answered.
“I took the closest one to our flight path.” “I thought that might be it. Thanks a lot. I’ll help somehow with the map to make it up.”
“Your own work is as likely as mine to provide the help.
It is all one picture—one pattern—we are trying to assemble, remember.”
“You’ve been thinking of more than that,” the Human insisted. Joe made no answer.
After a minute or two of silence, Charley resumed standard procedure. “Anything different at your end, Molly? I take it you’re still traveling.”
“Yes. Both up and down; the cave floor is very irregular, and I can’t even guess whether I’m higher or lower than where I first reached it. It’s certainly not a straight line; I’ve been able to leave tracks in the crystals. There’s no pattern I can work out; sometimes it’s fairly straight for a while, then a turn in either direction. If there’s any cause at all, I’d say the wind was being affected to some extent by the irregularities in the floor, but that’s not very informative and certainly not surprising. About all that’s helpful at the moment is that I can tell which way I’m going and look ahead to see if anything is coming up. So far, nothing seems to be.”
“We’ll be over your hill in another minute or two,” Joe commented. “I have this receiver at its highest practical amplification. Conceivably, if we’re close enough to straight above you, there’ll be little enough rock in the way to let some radiation through. That would depend at least partly on the shape of your cave, of course.”
“Especially of its ceiling, which I never did see,” agreed Molly. “Anything coming through?”
“I think—no—yes, there are traces on the right frequency, and ...” His voiced trailed off for a moment.
“And just about straight down?” asked Molly eagerly.
“Nearly so. The direction indication is not too definite. Charley, fly along this heading until I tell you to stop; then swing one-third circle to the right, and straight again. Keep doing that until I give you a new pattern.”
The Kantrick took over the keys without comment, and silence fell for several more minutes.
“Without meaning to be insulting, you’re allowing for my motion, of course,” Molly remarked at last.
“I am allowing for the certainty that you are moving,” replied the Nethneen much more precisely. “I would love to have an independent report on the actual vector. I think I have it worked out, actually, but distance readings—for that read depth, of course—are still inconsistent. You appear to be radiating from between four and six kilometers underground, which I find hard to believe considering the total time, the known horizontal speed of the robot, and the other information you have sent.”
“I’d just as soon not believe it myself,” responded Molly.
“Well, it’s the best I can do. There are sudden variations in direction that force me to conclude the measurements themselves are unreliable. There seems nothing to do but descend and let Carol or me start after you. Jenny, how much rope have you completed?”
“Five kilometers, nearly” was the chemist’s reply. “I doubt that Carol or even I could carry it all—because of the bulk rather than the weight.”
“The robot will, if it’s neatly enough stowed,” pointed out the planetologist. “Is that your hill, Charley?”
“Yes.”
“All right, let us down right beside it.” “Not right into the crater?”
“If Molly will forgive me, I’m going to devote another minute or two to practicing with the robot controls. I’d rather do that out here where a mistake won’t be quite so critical. I’m going to leave the slaves on the boat, coil the rope on top of the cylinder—the whole five kilos of it—with an end fastened to a weight or a post or something right here in the sand, rigged to pay off from the center of the coil as I travel. At least I can get back from five kilometers even if something goes wrong with the robot or my handling of it. I’m hoping with both lobes and all my blood pressure that Joe’s depth measure really is wrong. Down, Charley. Jenny, if you’ll bring the rope to the hold where the robot is, I’ll meet you there.”
“I’m there already. I had the spinnerets coil the rope as it was made, of course. It should pull out from one end without tangling.”
“Good. Recoiling that much by hand might have let Molly get more than five kilos away even if Joe is wrong. I’ll be right there.”
Molly found herself much more able to examine her surroundings after hearing the other women settle this matter. She had been in full armor this long before; most of the planets of the Fire-Smoke binary system, even Pearl, where the Human colony had centered because of the gravity, had environments where no Human could survive. She had done laboratory and course work on most of them at one time or another, often with no Human-conditioned station anywhere nearby. Then, however, the interest of the work itself usually kept her from considering personal comfort for very long at a time.
Now, though, she found herself thinking more and more of the simple comfort of being able to relax, move her limbs freely, and breathe without hearing an echo in her helmet. Decent gravity would also have been nice, though she had been aboard Classroom long enough to be less concerned with this aspect of life. With safety now a smaller problem than comfort, however, she could concentrate for a while longer on the job.
“Not much change yet,” she reported. “Still no sign of any wall to this cave, and the stuff underneath is about the same. Not enough pressure or temperature change to read. Did you find any reasonable prelife compounds in the earlier samples, Jenny?”
“I haven’t had time to work on them yet. I haven’t been able to think of any other explanation for the atmosphere, either. That clay is going to get a real working over, as soon as we get you out of there.”
“Along with a few other things. Sorry to have delayed you.”
“Forgiven, considering what you’ll be bringing back with you.”
“It’s a pity, isn’t it?” remarked Charley.
“What?” asked all three women.
“That all this stuff has probably been worked out already, and we just haven’t been allowed to see the answers.”
“Are you sure it has?” asked Jenny.
“Enigma has been known for tens of thousands of years. It must have been used for a lab exercise for just about all that time. Do you really think there’s much chance that we’re doing or finding anything new? The School just seals the student reports—if they even keep them. It would be more fun if we were allowed to start where the earlier ones left off. Don’t you think so, Molly? Then we’d have reasonable hope of coming up with something actually new.”