The three women were at the console, using the outside screens, looking first in one direction and then another.
“There’s a hill about half a kilometer away,” Carol pointed out. “There’ll be some eddying.”
“Do what we can,” replied Molly. “The sand, or snow, or whatever it is seems to be coming from about there.” She had her screen centered some thirty degrees to the right of Carol’s hill. After a few moments’ checking with their own viewers, the others agreed.
“Then Joe should be in the opposite direction.” Carol lined up her pickup as she spoke. “There does seem to be a broad, low hill that way. Maybe it’s the one you went over, Joe. I wish this stuff would stop blowing; we could see more clearly and maybe come after you.”
“If it would stop blowing, I could get back by myself,” the Nethneen pointed out. “How about it, you heavy-atmosphere types; do we expect this to go on indefinitely, or will it stop reasonably soon? Or does the fact that this planet rotates make prediction impossible?”
“Difficult,” replied Molly. “There isn’t time for a talk about weather and forecasting just now. I don’t know whether this wind is a local storm good for a few hours, or something that will last for the next twenty or thirty years until the season changes. Any planning we do had better include the breeze, and we’ll just be grateful for the luck if it drops.” The other air-breathers gestured agreement.
Charley, not used to feeling helpless and disliking the sensation, made a suggestion. “Couldn’t we take the ship to the other side of the hill?”
“We could,” answered Molly slowly, “if we were sure we could avoid putting it down on Joe if he’s there and getting back to this spot to restore his only possible reference point if he turns out not to be.”
Jenny suddenly straightened and elevated the front half of her two meter body. “We could send one of his own wind-robots after him!” she exclaimed. “They’re inertially guided and supposed to hold position or travel on a predetermined path regardless of the air current…”
“That sounds hopeful” came Joe’s voice. “But reprogramming will be needed first. They are programmed to fly into the wind—I wanted them to determine sources, not sinks. That can be changed, of course. Someone will have to make them go with the current, but at a very restricted speed so that I can catch it if it does come close—no, I won’t be able even to see it unless it comes pretty close. Someone will have to ride with it, using it as a vehicle, and alter its course or stop it when and as needed. You all know the machinery well enough to do the control changes; I think Jenny’s thought is excellent.”
“The idea is good, but offers practical difficulties,” pointed out Molly. “Your controls are easily keyed by your tendrils. Charley and Jenny and I can’t even get handlers in to them, and even if I could reach them, I don’t think my fingers are delicate enough to…”
“True,” cut in Carol. “Not to be critical, dear, but Humans are clumsy. You drop crumbs from your cake. Also you are large and massive, which may not mean too much in this gravity, but since the robots were not designed to carry anything and the driver will have to be fastened to the machine to keep from being blown away like Joe, it probably is significant. Let’s get one of those machines. I’ll rework the program.”
All four started to leave the conning room; Jenny stopped before they reached the door. “Charley, you’re enough to help Carol if she needs any. Molly and I had better stay here and observe. Our first trouble seems to have happened because we acted without learning enough about this place.”
“A good thought” came Joe’s voice. Charley seemed hesitant, but when Molly nodded and turned back with the Rimmore he swallowed whatever he had been about to say and went on with the small woman.
“Carol had better wear full environmental armor when she goes out,” the Human remarked as they settled back in the observing stations. “I think we’d better act as though we didn’t know how long we were going to be out whenever we go outside on this world.”
“No one thinks of everything.” Jenny performed her equivalent of a shrug.
“True, but I’d come to think of Joe as a bit above that sort of slip.”
“Maybe he had, too.” For a moment Molly wondered how the Nethneen would be affected by that remark; then she remembered that both translators would have shifted to private channels in response to the tones of the speakers. Most of the team members had established such links when the group first formed, though none existed between Charley and the two nonhuman women. Molly had been rather disturbed by this at the time, but decided that there was nothing she could say that would be better than silence. Some species, of course, had a strongly negative attitude toward the idea of privacy in any form—though this could not be Charley’s reason, since he had set up channels with Joe and Molly on his own initiative.
In any case, the remark had been made, Joe had probably not heard it, and if he had, he was either detached enough not to resent it or a good enough actor not to show it. Perhaps more important was the likelihood that Charley had not heard it, either.
Those thoughts flickered through Molly’s mind too quickly to interfere with important questions; she didn’t even miss Jenny’s next point.
“Carol will have to take Joe’s armor along.”
“I thought of that” came the Shervah’s voice. “Charley is getting it ready and will figure out some way of fastening it to the machine.”
“I’m afraid I was not foresighted enough to provide the bodies with convenient points of attachment,” Joe remarked. “I should have made more allowance for the unforeseen. I begin to see why the Faculty insists on a certain amount of laboratory and field work before granting any sort of rating.”
“That annoyed me when I first got here,” remarked Molly. “I had a perfectly good doctorate in structure from a place on New Pembroke and was quite ready to make clear how much I knew to anyone who cared. They let me lake charge of a lab group doing an exercise on Sink…”
“I know that one,” remarked Jenny.
“—and I started to set up some outside equipment in ordinary space armor. All that kept me from losing my feet was the fact that the gravity was low enough to let me walk fifty meters on my hands. My brains had nothing to do with it. An ice ball at a temperature of about six Kelvins can really suck heat from a suit; even my hands were losing their feeling by the time I got back to safety. The worst of it was that I couldn’t say anything to my six-year-old except that I’d been stupid, and his father had to agree with me.”
“Do you think the child will be able to profit by the lesson?” Jenny asked with interest.
“I can only hope. I certainly did. This Faculty knows enough about teaching to let us make our own mistakes, I found out. At least your robots can be reprogrammed, Joe,” pointed out Molly.
“When I was designing them, I had not made up my mind about the best way to use them. As you’ve already noticed, I did not give thought enough to who might have to do the programming.”
“Are conditions still the same where you are, Joe?” Jenny cut in. “I know you’ve buried yourself, but with this wind it might be wise to make sure you’re not getting buried even more deeply. That hill you were carried over sounded suspiciously like a dune, and if you can’t get to the surface when Carol is near you she might as well stay here.”
“My translator has no symbol for dune, but the concept of blowing sand makes sense. A moment while I try. It’s just as well this happened to me rather than you, Jenny; I can see nothing while buried, and for you the gravity is so weak you probably couldn’t tell which way is up.” He fell silent for a few seconds. “I’m uncovered. I don’t think I was any deeper, though I admit I hadn’t measured. I do have an impression that the slope of the hill that I descended is a trifle closer than when I dug in; is that the sort of thing you had in mind?”