Chapter Twelve
Of Course We’re Lost
Carol cut in promptly and incisively, “Were you right at the stream when you started back, Molly, or some distance to one side?”
“Ten or fifteen meters to one side—the right, in the direction I was going originally.”
“All right. Joe?”
“Yes, Carol.”
“Everything has been logged since Molly went underground, hasn’t it? Instrument and conversation records?” “Certainly.”
“Please give me, as quickly as you can, the time between Molly’s entering the crack—the one her robot almost didn’t fit and I had so much trouble finding—and the time she reported starting back. Molly, can you judge how much time you spent putting the ice coating on your robot?”
“Fairly well. It was pretty quick—eight or ten minutes.”
“How far did you travel between the time you started doing it and the time you finished and started back? Did your robot make any really wide or strange turns while you were doing it?”
“No, to the second question. Not more than fifty or a hundred meters, to the first.”
“Good. I know, to within a few meters, how far into this passage I have come. Joe’s time, when he gives it, should tell me how far upwind you traveled; and you are sure you never went very far from the stream going down it. I’ll calculate where you made the turn and get my machine there as quickly as I can, checking the brook to make sure the wind hasn’t changed too greatly. It shouldn’t be very long. Maybe there’ll be some trace of your work—some of the water you sprayed may be on the rock as recognizable ice. I’m not the chemist Jenny is, but anyone can recognize water by color. Just in case there isn’t any trace, you can spend the time I’m on the way describing the area as exactly as you can remember it. I know that won’t be very exactly, but any data can help. From there, we’ll have to—I’ll have to—take a chance that what seemed like the opposite direction along the stream to you will seem the same to me, closely enough so that when I set my machine along a line it will be the right one.”
“You’ll be beyond the rope, Carol,” Charley pointed out. “You already are.”
“Can’t help it. Can’t wait. Molly’s still traveling. I can remember what I see well enough to get back to it. I thought of going after her on foot for a moment—I’d be more able to spot any trail she might have left, or details she might remember—but it seems safer to keep the robot with me, and it should be able to go wherever hers has.”
“Nothing very remarkable to report so far,” Molly interjected.
“Since you woke up, you mean. All right, I’m ready to start as soon as I get Joe’s log figures.”
The Nethneen responded at once, and after a few moments of mental arithmetic Carol was traveling. “I should get to the place where you did your ice job in less than an hour at this rate, and if I manage to hit your line closely enough I should catch you in maybe an hour or an hour and a quarter more, Molly.”
The Human acknowledged; she had not finished doing the arithmetic herself and didn’t think she was getting quite the same answer; but of course Joe would have used either School or his own time and distance units, and her translator would have rounded both of these—no, that couldn’t be it; Joe would have expressed himself quite precisely, and the computer on her wrist would have gone equally far in significant figures. Probably Carol was considering factors of her own, like time to reset her own robot’s programming. Molly wasn’t really awake yet, she began to realize, and this wasn’t good. She must see and remember as much as possible of the route she was following, so that she could give the Shervah some sort of reasonable description if one were needed.
She swung her light around—that might serve another purpose; if they were still in the same cavern, Carol might see it. Certainly the place she was in was large; no wall was in sight in any direction. There must be a roof, but it was too far above to let her distinguish any real details. The floor, of course, was right below. Molly shone her beam alternately forward and backward, trying to decide whether or not the floor was level, but was unable to make up her mind. Presumably the cylinder’s own attitude was erect, but it was small, and her own semicircular canals were of little help in this gravity. She found herself sure at one moment that she was going down a fairly steep slope and seconds later just as sure that she was climbing.
The floor was rock, not quite like any she had seen before on Enigma, but not very different; whether the change meant anything she could not be sure. It still seemed rather loose, friable stuff. Nothing resembling igneous rocks with which she was familiar had shown up so far on Enigma. She dismounted and took a closer look, reporting the nature of the material as precisely as she could to the others and cutting out a specimen at Carol’s request.
“I know I can get one myself if I find you, but your dig will make a mark that will tell me I’m on the right track. We should have thought of this earlier. Make a hole in the rock every few minutes—use your laser if you have to.”
“I haven’t seen much that really needed it yet,” replied Molly, “but I’ll do better than that. I’ll mark an arrow—does that symbol translate?—all right—to indicate which way the robot is going. I might even run off to the sides every now and then and make arrows pointing toward the trail, just to improve your chances of hitting it. There are occasional patches of dust now; I won’t always have to use the hammer, even.”
“Dust or salt?” asked Jenny.
“I couldn’t say. Very, very fine powder; I don’t have equipment to check the composition—I certainly don’t intend to check whether it’s water-soluble, and the ammonia brook is still out of sight. To forestall your next request, I have no more unused collecting cans, Jenny; you’ll have to hope Carol hasn’t filled all hers before she gets here.”
Silence fell for some time, interrupted only by Charley’s occasional check questions and, more rarely, by Molly’s description of some change in her surroundings. She was almost, but not quite, sure now that her path was again descending quite steeply.
“Any wind that you can feel?” asked Joe.
" ’Fraid not. That doesn’t mean there is none—wait a minute; here’s another patch that might be sand or dust. Let me try something—hey, Carol, there’s a crust on this; the surface is hard. It looks like dried, cracked mud. There’s fine stuff underneath, though. Just a minute. Joe, there’s a very slight breeze, enough to carry some of the finest dust as I drop it, going roughly from right to left across my present path. Very weak indeed—in the centimeters-per-second class, I’d say, though at the rate things fall here my time sense is getting ruined, too.”
“Note that, Carol.”
“Don’t worry, I wasn’t going to use wind to follow her, Joe. I think I’m about at the place where she used the water now. You said you were a few meters to the right of the stream, Molly?”
“That’s right.”
“Well, I don’t see any ice stains on the rock, but I suppose you’d have been careful not to waste any.” “I certainly was.”
“Did the stream go perfectly straight for twelve meters, with a width varying from ninety-three to one hundred centimeters, then make a five-degree bend to the right, widening by twelve centimeters as it did so, and then take on a rather sinuous path for the next forty-five meters, making three oscillations with an amplitude of just under one meter, and…”
“As nearly as I can recall, that’s about right; but I can’t be sure how much is honest memory and how much is coming from your description.”
“Of course,” the Shervah remarked in an annoyed tone.