V

 

 

“How much do you know about the dual principles of flight?” Ugant inquired of Chybee as they padded between countless huge and glistening globes, each larger than any unmodified bladder she had ever seen. Because pumplekins were forcing them full of pure wetgas, and there was inevitable leakage—though it was not poisonous—their surroundings were making the girl’s weather-sense queasy. Sensing her distress, the professor went on to spell out information most of which in fact she knew.

“The first clues must have come from cloudcrawlers so long ago we have no record of it. Archeological records indicate that we also owe to the study of natural floaters the discovery that air is a mixture of several elements. Of course, it was a long time before the lightest could be separated out by more efficient means than occur in nature. And floaters drift at the mercy of the wind, so it again took a considerable while before we invented bellowers like those over there”—with a jab of one claw towards a bank of tubular creatures slumped in resting posture on a wooden rack. “How did you travel from Hulgrapuk to Slah?”

“I flew,” Chybee told her, wide-eyed with wonder.

“So you’ve seen them in operation, gulping air and tightening so as to compress it to the highest temperature they can endure, and then expelling it rearward. We got to that principle by studying the seeds emitted by certain rock-plants. But of course it’s also how we swim, isn’t it? And there’s even a possibility that our remotest ancestors may have exploited the same technique by squirting air from under their hind mantles. You know we evolved from carnivores that haunted the overgrowth of the primeval forest?”

“My parents don’t believe in evolution,” Chybee said.

“Ridiculous!” Wam exclaimed. “How can anybody not?”

“According to them, intelligence came into existence everywhere at the same time as the whole universe. On every world but ours, mind-power controls matter directly. That’s how Swiftyouth and Sunbride hurled the Greatest Meteorite at us. Our world alone is imperfect. They even try to make out that other planets’ satellites don’t sparkle or show phases, but are always at the full.”

Wam threw up her claws in despair. “Then they are insane! Surely even making a model, with a clump of luminants in the middle to represent the sun, would suffice to—”

“Oh, I tried it once!” Chybee interrupted bitterly. “I was punished by being forbidden to set pad outside our home for a whole moonlong!”

“What were you supposed to learn from that?”

“I suppose: not to contradict my budder …” Chybee gathered her forces with an effort. “Please go on, Professor Ugant. I’m most interested.”

With a doubtful glance at her, as though suspecting sarcasm, Ugant complied.

“What, though, you might well say, does our ability to fly through the air have to do with flying into vacant space? After all, we know that even the largest and lightest floaters we can construct, with the most powerful bellowers we can breed to drive them, can never exceed a certain altitude. So we must resort to something totally new. And there it is.”

Again following her gesture, Ugant saw a long straight row of unfamiliar trees, boughs carefully warped so as to create a continuous series of rings from which hung worn but shiny metal plates and scores of nervograp tendrils.

“Ah!” Wam said. “I’ve seen pictures of that. Isn’t it where you test your drivers?”

“Correct. And the storage bladders beyond are the ones we had to devise specially to contain their fuel. What can you show to match them?”

Wam shrugged. “As yet, we’ve concentrated less on this aspect of the task than on what we regard as all-important: eventual survival of the folk in space.”

“But what’s the good of solving that problem,” Ugant snapped, “if you don’t possess a means to send them there?”

“With you working on one half of the job, and me on the other …” Wam countered disprongingly, and Ugant had to smile as they moved on towards the curiously distorted trees. Hereabouts there was a stench of burning, not like ordinary fire, but as though something Chybee had never encountered had given off heat worse than focused sunlight. Under the warped trees there was no mosh such as had cushioned their pads since leaving the scudder; indeed, the very texture of the soil changed, becoming hard—becoming crisp.

“You’re in luck,” Ugant said suddenly, gazing along the tree-line to its further end and pointing out a signal made by someone waving a cluster of leaves. “There’s a test due very shortly. Come on, and I’ll introduce you to Hyge, our technical director.”

Excitedly Chybee hastened after her companions. They led her past a house laced about with nervograps, which challenged them in a far harsher tone than Ugant’s home, but the professor calmed it with a single word. Some distance beyond, a score of young people were at work under the direction of a tall woman who proved to be Hyge herself, putting finishing touches to a gleaming cylinder in a branch-sprung cradle. It contained more mass of metal than Chybee had ever seen; she touched it timidly to convince herself that it was real.

In a few brief words Ugant summed up the purpose of their visit, and Hyge dipped respectfully to Wam.

“This is an honor, Professor! I’ve followed your research for years. Ugant and I don’t always see eye to eye, but we do share a great admiration for your pioneering experiments in spatial life-support. How are you getting on with your attempt to create a vacuum?”

“Fine!” was Wam’s prompt answer. “But unless and until we resolve our other differences, I don’t foresee that we shall work together. Suppose you continue with your test? It may impress me so much that … Well, you never know.”

Smiling, Hyge called her assistants back to the house, while Ugant whispered explanations to Chybee.

“To drive a vehicle those last score padlonglaqs out of the atmosphere, there’s only one available technique. If there isn’t any air to gulp and squirt out, then you have to take along your own gas. We borrowed the idea from certain sea-creatures which come up to the surface, fill their bladders with air, and then rely on diving to compress it to the point where it’s useful. When they let it go, it enables them to pounce on their prey almost as our forebudders must have done.”

“I don’t like to be reminded that our ancestors ate other animals,” Chybee confessed.

“How interesting! I wonder whether that may account for some of the reaction people like your parents display when confronted by the brutal necessity of recycling during a spaceflight … But we can discuss that later. Right now you need to understand that what Hyge has set up for testing is a driver full of two of the most reactive chemicals we’ve ever discovered. When they’re mixed, they combust and force out a mass of hot gas. This propels the cylinder forward at enormous speed. Our idea is to lift such a cylinder—with a payload of adapted spores and seeds—to the greatest altitude a floater can achieve. Then, by using the special star-seekers we’ve developed, we can orient it along the desired flight-path, and from there it will easily reach orbital height and velocity.”

“But scaling it up to carry what we’ll need for actual survival out there is—” Wam began.

“Out of the question!” Ugant conceded in a triumphant tone. “Now will you agree that our best course is to—?”

Hyge cut in. “Scaling up is just a matter of resources. Save your disputes until after we find out whether our new budling works! Don’t look at the jet! Slack down to tornado status! Keep your mandibles and vents wide open! The overpressure from this one will be fierce!”

And, after checking that the cylinder’s course was clear of obstructions and that all the stations from which reports were to be made were functional, she slid back a plank of stiffbark in the control house’s floor and imposed her full weight on something Chybee could not clearly see but which she guessed to be a modified form of mishle, one of the rare secondary growths known as flashplants which, after the passage of a thunderstorm, could kill animal prey by discharging a violent spark, and would then let down tendrils to digest the carcass.

Instantly there was a terrible roaring noise. The cylinder uttered a prong of dazzling flame—“Look that way!” Ugant shouted, and when Chybee proved too fascinated to respond, swung her bodily around and made her gaze along the tree-row—and sped forward on a course that carried it exactly through the center of the wooden rings, clearing the metal plates by less than a clawide.

Almost as soon as it had begun, the test was over bar the echoes it evoked from the hills, and a rousing cheer rang out. But it was barely loud enough to overcome the deafness they were all suffering. Chybee, who had not prepared herself for pressure as great as Hyge had warned of, felt as though she had been beaten from crest to pads.

“Oh, I’m glad we were here to witness that,” said Ugant softly. “Wam, aren’t you impressed?”

“She should be,” Hyge put in caustically, checking the recordimals connected to the incoming nervograps. “That’s the first time our guidimals have kept the cylinder level through every last one of the rings. And if we can repeat that, we’ll have no problem aiming straight up!”

“Are you all right, Chybee?” Ugant demanded as she recovered from her fit of euphoria.

“I—uh …” But pretense was useless. “I wasn’t ready for such a shock. I was still full of questions. Like: what are the metal plates for?”

“Oh, those,” Hyge murmured. “Well, you see, not even the most sensitive of our detectors can respond to signals emitted by the cylinder as it rushes past faster than sound. If you were standing right near the arrival point, you’d be hit by a sonic blast, a wave of air compressed until it’s practically solid. Even this far away it can be painful, can’t it? So we had to find a method of translating the impact into something our normal instruments can read. What we do is compress metal plates against shielded nervograp inputs, compensating for the natural elasticity of the trees, which we developed from a species known to be highly gale-resistant—”

She broke off. Chybee had slumped against Ugant. “Does she need help?” Hyge demanded. “I can send an aide to fetch—”

At the same time making it clear by her exudates that this would be an unwarrantable interference with her immediate preoccupations.

“No need to worry,” Ugant said softly, comforting the girl with touch after gentle touch of her claws. “She’s a bit distraught, that’s all. Wam and I are at fault; on the way here we should have explained more clearly what we were going to show her.”

“Yes, I’m all right,” Chybee whispered, forcing herself back to an upright posture, though lower than normal. “I just decided that all your efforts mustn’t go to waste. So I’m willing and eager to do what Ugant wants.”

“What’s that?” Hyge inquired with a twist of curiosity as her assistants started to arrive with the first of the non-remote readings.

“You’ll find out,” Ugant promised. “And with luck it may make the future safe for sanity. If it does, of course—well, then, the name of Chybee will be famous!”