Another explosion took the human beings’ attention from raft and messenger for a moment, but again nothing fell dangerously close to either structure.
“I don’t see how this can last much longer,” Earrin remarked. “It’s strange that the smoke is all coming up from one spot, as though the initial fire weren’t spreading. How could it have so much fuel in one spot?”
“You stay up there and watch. I’ll go in and see if the jailbird knows anything about it,” Kahvi suggested. Earrin glanced downward. The transparent roof tissue reflected enough sky light to prevent a clear view of what was under it, but he could make out some movement.
“Wait a minute,” he said. “I think someone’s coming out. He has a mask on, anyway.”
“How can he do that? Has he fixed the roof already?”
“No. Maybe —” Earrin fell silent; he could think of no possible reason for letting roof repair drop from top priority. “Maybe you’d better go in, at that,” he said at last. “I’ll watch.” Neither of them was suspicious by nature, but there was something strange here.
Kahvi was already heading for the air lock, a pool of water extending under the east wall. Her husband watched her submerge and, with more difficulty, saw her emerge inside the building. With difficulty, he reminded himself firmly that his current job was fire watch; but he still glanced downward occasionally.
Kahvi straightened up — the pool was less than a meter and a half deep under the wall — and went up the steps to the floor level. They had been here before many times, and a quick glance showed little general change. Her main interest was in the room’s single occupant.
This was a man — really little more than an adolescent — was years younger than either Kahvi or Earrin, much thinner than even the latter, and several centimeters taller than either of the Fyns. He was even thinner than the typical Hiller, and his skin showed no trace of the yellow characteristic of people who spent much time outdoors. The hundredth-normal nitric acid of the oceans was too dilute to color proteins, but the rain was sometimes another matter. His hair looked a little too long for comfortable mask work. The woman took in all this at the first glance, while stepping quickly toward the wall opposite the lock.
“Why don’t you fix your roof?” she snapped as she threaded her way among the tables covered with oxygen plants.
The boy swept off the mask he had been adjusting.
“I was going to. What’s the rush?”
“You’re letting oxygen out, and spores in. Here are your patches. Here’s the cement. Get that small hole at the north end — I can’t reach it. I’ll work on that big one over the table — you idiot! One of the trays on that table is burning! Toss it into the lock, clean it out, finish patching these holes, and then get it restocked. I suppose some stuff from the roof fell on it. Move! If you’re here for education, it doesn’t seem to be taking!”
The youngster’s face flushed, but he made no answer. He moved at about half Kahvi’s speed to the indicated table, picked up the tray of psuedolife which was flaming in the rich atmosphere, and carried it to the air lock. The fire had started in the middle of the half-meter-square box, and had not yet come close enough to the edges to make them impossible to handle; but he winced as the flames and smoke curled upward from his burden, and held it as far from himself as his strength allowed. Kahvi noted that he also held it away from the other tables, so perhaps he was somewhere above the moron level — when she was annoyed, she sometimes didn’t distinguish carefully between stupidity and the ignorance whichcould, after all, be equally deadly.
She leaped to the table where the burning tray had been, and reached up with the patch she had been cementing as she crossed the room. The roof was still somewhat out of reach, but a jump put her high enough to slap the square of tissue against the hole. The cement would hold it in place for the few hours it would need to grow into union with the rest of the roof. This was the largest hole, the one her husband and Bones had extinguished last. The others were not directly over tables, but with a wordless gesture she directed the jailbird to move two of the latter. Within two more minutes the roof was airtight, and she descended from the last table to face the young Hiller.
“All right, I’m sorry I was insulting,” she said after eyeing him silently for a moment. “I suppose there’s some reason why I found you fumbling with a mask as though you were going outside, instead of fixing your roof.”
“I was going out to help put out fires on the roof,” he replied. “Suppose a whole lot of sparks had come at once?”
“Suppose they had. You had a sponge and water in here, and could work just as well with them as Earrin could from on top — better; you could wet your sponge more easily. There were no patches outside, and a hole needs to be patched as soon as possible. Didn’t anyone teach you that before they sent you here?”
“Of course.” The voice and expression were sullen, now. “I’d have done the patching when no more fire arrived. Putting that out came first, it seemed to me.”
“True enough, but someone else was taking care of that, and as I said you could do it better from inside. Were you trying to think?”
“Of course. If you don’t think before you act, you can kill people. Everyone knows that — or weren’t you taught anything?”
“Lots. Thinking may be all right inside a city, but outdoors or as near to outdoors are we are here, you don’t let thinking interfere with your hangups. Thinking is too slow to keep you alive. If you don’t have the right habits, then hoping is better than — grab a sponge! Here’s some more!”
Two almost simultaneous thuds had sounded.
There were several of the sponge-tipped rods lying against the walls; Kahvi seized one as she spoke.
Simultaneously her husband’s voice sounded from above. “Kahv! More fire! I’ll take the east wall, where I can wet my sponge in the lock pool!”
Kahvi tore off her mask to permit freer speech and shouted her agreement. For the next few seconds she paid no attention to the jailbird, but he also seized a rod with commendable speed, and a moment later they were far too busy to exchange anything but brief gestures as a dozen sputtering coals landed on the roof. None of the resulting holes burned wider than sponge size before being chilled into quiescence, but patches were still being applied when the next explosion sounded.
For a quarter of an hour everyone was too occupied to think, though in one brief lull Kahvi called up to her husband, “What about the raft? Is Danna all right?” She did not allow her concern to interfere with her activity.
I can’t see very well,” Earrin reminded her.
“There doesn’t seem to be any smoke out that way, though, and Bones hasn’t come back.” He suggested no reasons for the latter fact; Kahvi could make appropriate inferences for herself. If either parent was worried, however, it didn’t show while the work went on.
Eventually the smoke from beyond the ridge thinned and died, and the frightening thuds of exploding wood ceased to sound. The roof of the jail was a mass of patches, but it was airtight.
“I think we’re through with it,” Earrin called.
“I’ll stay up here for a while, though. You can relax inside.”
“What about the others?” Kahvi asked.
“All right, I’m sure. The raft is there and looks all right. One of us is going to have to make me a better mask. Maybe if the Hillers don’t need all this shipment — yes, I can see them both coming this way, now. Danna’s in front, and she’d be hanging back if anything much had happened to the raft or the tent, since we told her to take care of them.”“Glass? Raft? You must be the traders,” the occupant of the jail cut in. “No wonder you were so full of outside customs. I should have thought. I must have lost track of the days-you weren’t due for a week yet, were you?”