Having power shut down at a time like this was not a pleasant prospect. Was liquid already spreading around inside? Would the device respond to its keys when she did manage to find a safe time to open the access port? Right now it was alternately stopping and resuming descent as drops moved into the path of its height sensor and out again. Each change in motion was a relief to the little Shervah. Neither motion meant safety from more collisions; stopped, they could be caught by the falling drops, and descending they were overtaking them; but changing motion meant the robot was functional. If only she could see!
Feeling turned out to be enough. Another descent started, and this time the metal cylinder failed to stay upright. Feeble as the gravity was, Carol could tell which way she was hanging in her safety ropes. So could Molly.
“Robot power is off,” reported the Human as calmly as she could. “We’re falling. Our terminal velocity seems to be faster than the smaller drops, but not as much faster as we were going down before. Maybe I can keep us clear of them long enough to get Carrie’s helmet dry now.”
“Is that worth doing?” asked Jenny. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to sound quite that pessimistic. Any idea what you’re falling into? That must be a really gigantic cavern; you’ve been going down for minutes.”
“That doesn’t mean too much here,” the Human replied. “If we can get the inside of this machine dry and find our way to where you and Charley are mapping, this will have been just another interesting datum. Trouble is, if we land in a lake or river, we may have to swim this thing to shore. I wonder whether the robot-Carol-Molly system averages out less dense than liquid ammonia. I certainly hope so. The last two parts certainly are, but I don’t know about this piece of metal.”
Jenny was probably the most aware of the grotesque aspect of the situation, in spite of the fact that she could see it only by imagination. Her native world’s gravity was nearly twice that of Earth, and the mental picture of her two friends carrying on a more or less reasonable conversation while falling through darkness toward some point they could not sec and whose distance below they couldn’t guess seemed dreamlike in some ways and irresponsible in others. Like most intelligent beings, she had a sense of humor. She had time to reflect how lucky it was that her normal expression of it was not audible and would not be carried by the translators; lucky, since the present situation wasn’t really funny and a laugh like Molly’s or a buzz like Joe’s would be most inappropriate. Her friends might be dead in the next few seconds.
She controlled the body-ripple that would have corresponded to a giggle had another Rimmore seen it, and listened tensely. Falling took so long here!
“Good going, Molly! I can see!” came Carol’s voice after what seemed minutes of silence.
“What’s around you?” asked Charley.
“Large drops of juice, against a dark background. What else? We’re still falling. Mol, we’re going to hit that one; can we—good! I don’t know if you moved it or moved us. Too bad we don’t have a Parkemm here; your arms don’t really make good wings, and mine are worse.”
“The last time you wanted to fly was on Sink, when you were beginning to wonder whether our suits were going to keep us warm after all.”
“Well, we practically did. The gravity was only a tenth of what it is here, and we could keep ourselves in the air—well, off the surface—nearly all the time by jumping. The main point was to keep out of contact with the ground.”
“But even in that gravity a Parkemm couldn’t have flown. A trace of helium won’t…”
“Watch it—there’s another drop! Anyway you’re quibbling.”
“I can’t keep this up. I’m afraid we’re going to have to put up with being wet—Lord, we certainly are! Look down there, if that’s really down!”
“It’s the way we seem to be going. It…”
“What is it?”
“Just listen, Charley. We’ll report when we have time, and until then infer what you can from what we say to each other. I’d say it was too bumpy to be a lake, but with these big drops merging into it and taking awhile to settle, maybe it’s just because I expect a wave on a lake to go away at a decent speed.”
“It’s too big to be called a puddle. I hope it doesn’t rate as an ocean,” replied Molly. “Here we go. Any bets on whether we float?”
“Not with my credit. I don’t think there’d be room for an ocean in a cave, even with this gravity. Will you hold my hand? My brain trusts these ropes, but the rest of me doesn’t, quite.”
“Right. And hold the robot, too. You need it more than you need me.”
“That’s another point where my brain and the rest of me don’t agree. We’re not floating, are we?”
“We’re not at any surface yet. I’d like to have seen our splash from outside; just a slow-motion replay of an ordinary one wouldn’t cover the surface tension effects. There, that seems to be surface, a few meters that way.” Molly pointed with her light.
“We can see all right now, Charley,” Carol remarked rather savagely.
“How far?”
“Hard to tell.” Molly took over. “Tens of meters, I’d say. There’s nothing by which to judge the distance; we’re just hanging here. Come on, Carol, let’s see if we can swim effectively enough to drag this thing to the surface, if that is the surface.”
“It must be. The bubbles that came under with us seem to be heading that way, though they aren’t in much of a hurry. If it is, we’re traveling; the bumps we saw from above are gone—we must be away from where the spray is falling.” The women fell silent and concentrated on swimming, which is not easy in armor. Molly was good at it under more normal circumstances, and the Shervah caught on quickly watching her. The metal cylinder was certainly denser than the liquid, but Molly found herself able to drag it upward by herself even before her friend was able to offer effective help. Newton’s third law, the inertial aspect of swimming, enjoyed considerable advantage in Enigma’s gravity even if Archimedes’ Principle didn’t. Even so, it took some minutes for their helmets to break the surface.
“Nothing to report,” Molly said after sweeping her light around. “I assume there’s a current because we seem to be away from the fall already, but if this is a river we can’t see any bank, we can’t see any sides or top to the cave, and we don’t know which way or how fast we’re going. So much for finding your mapped areas.”
“Then Jenny and I map southward and try to find your ammoniafall,” replied Charley promptly.
“Which we probably won’t stay anywhere near.”
“Can you suggest anything better, Carrie?”
“No. Sorry, Charley. And maybe this will still be a river you can follow.” Molly looked at her companion in some surprise, but her helmet was pulled below the surface by the robot at that moment and she missed whatever expression was on the Shervah’s face. It took her half a minute to get up again, and some seconds more for the liquid to drain sufficiently from her faceplate to permit clear vision.
She decided that tact was more important than satisfaction of curiosity. So was survival.
“Carrie, we don’t float. We can’t stay up forever on muscle power. I hate to suggest it, but I think we drift to wherever we’re going along the bottom of this brook.”
“Why go anywhere?” asked Charley. “The robot isn’t dragging you; why not wait for us to find you? It will no doubt take quite a while, but your armor will keep you alive.”