Chapter 34
Back in the wardroom they took lunch, eating rather uninteresting sandwiches (Grimes bitterly regretted not having had the crab put in a safe place) and washing them down with mineral water. After the meal and a brief smoke Grimes suggested that they get in a supply of fresh water. There were buckets available; there were some large empty plastic bins that could be filled. Sanchez volunteered to do the actual bucket filling and insisted that it was his duty. While he stooped on the river bank, bending out and down and over, Su Lin and Grimes kept watch—she of the sky and he of the water. Her weapon had a far greater range than his, the laser tool.
The winged creatures did not bother them. The many-legged swimmers did, once they became aware of the humans’ existence. Grimes drove off the first attack, by a single predator, without any difficulty. He discovered that if he kept the water boiling or almost so it was a good deterrent. The ugly, vicious things did not venture from the merely warm into the very hot. He was beginning to congratulate himself when, very fortunately, he took a glance upstream. The water centipedes—as he had decided to call them—were coming ashore, were advancing toward them, their two-meter-long bodies wriggling sinuously along the bank. Hastily he and the others retreated up the hill, temporarily abandoning the buckets. Luckily the aquatic predators could not stay long out of their native element. They returned to the river.
But they waited there, their writhing bodies gleaming just under the surface, stalked eyes upheld like periscopes.
Grimes had seen in the workshop some pairs of rubberized work gauntlets. Accompanied by Su Lin and Sanchez he went to get three pairs of these.
“A good idea, sir, now that it’s too late,” complained Sanchez. “I could have done with these when I was having to dip my hands into that near-as-dammit boiling water . . .”
“They’re to insulate against more than heat,” Grimes told him.
Su Lin laughed appreciatively; she was quicker on the uptake than the pilot.
They went in search, then, of shockers. It was quite easy to distinguish them from those other gaudy plants that they imitated. If a thing wriggled sluggishly when it was lifted, it was a shocker. If it didn’t wriggle and was securely rooted to the ground it wasn’t. They were able to build a barricade of the electric plants up-river from where the buckets had been left. Then Grimes, with the laser, heated the water to near-boiling point again, simmering a centipede that was evincing hostile attentions toward him. The other creatures, as before, came ashore upstream. They tried to cross the living, garish carpet to get at their prey. They twitched and died.
Grimes wondered if they were edible—but the motile plants had already made that decision. Very soon the long, twisted bodies were enveloped and the process of ingestion had commenced. Grimes shrugged. Those centipedes hadn’t looked very appetizing. Hopefully, perhaps tomorrow, at the same time as today, there would be another procession of crabs. . . .
Anyhow, something had been accomplished. The wreck of Fat Susie was now well stocked with water.
“What now, Commodore?” asked Sanchez wearily.
“We get down into the control car to fetch out the charts, Raoul.”
“Come off it, sir. Can’t it wait until tomorrow? We’ve put in a very busy day, and it will be advisable for us to keep watches all through the night. We’ve seen only the daytime beasties—Bakunin alone knows what the nocturnal ones are like!”
“Was Bakunin a xenobiologist?” asked Grimes interestedly.
“Just somebody to swear by, sir—the same as your Odd Gods of the Galaxy.”
“We’ll continue this theological discussion later,” said Grimes. “Right now I want those charts. I want to see what chance we have of getting out of here.”
“But we can’t even get ashore from this blasted island!”
“Can’t we?” asked Grimes gently. “Can’t we?”
“Of course we can,” said Su Lin, “as long as the Commodore’s famous luck hasn’t run out.”
“I don’t think that it has,” said Grimes softly. “I don’t think that it has. . . .”
They had to cut their way into the control car, using the laser tool. Fortuitously—a case of Grimes’s luck!—the aperture that they burned in the deck was directly over the chart table. Fantastically none of the charts sustained fire damage. They took these to the wardroom, spread them out on the carpet, studied them.
“We’re here,” said Sanchez definitely, drawing a circle around the representation of an island in a wide river with a soft pencil.
“Are you sure, Raoul?”
“Yes, sir. It’s not far from where Flattery attacked us. We made very little headway after that—for obvious reasons.”
“Mphm. Now find me a small scale chart, one with the Shocking River and this island on it but showing the terrain beyond the Unclaimed Territory.”
“This one should do. Commodore.”
“Good. Now, how was the wind today?”
“I . . . I didn’t notice. . . .”
“Did you, Su Lin?”
“No.”
“Well, I did. It’s been northerly all the time—no more than light airs during the forenoon but. by now, quite a stiff breeze. Presumably—and hopefully—this weather pattern will persist. From where we are now the shortest distance to what is laughingly referred to as civilization is due south.”
“But we still have to get off the island, sir!” protested Sanchez. “And then, when we do, we have to cross at least a thousand kilometers of broken terrain crawling with all manner of things. . . .”
“I know that, Raoul. Now, am I correct in stating that I saw, in the workshop some tubes of a very special adhesive?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Used when you’re slapping patches on to ruptured helium cells.”
“That’s what it’s for, sir.”
“And did I see some cylinders of compressed helium?”
“You did.” Sanchez laughed. “I see what you’re driving at. Commodore. A balloon with the envelope made from pieces of our burst gas cells glued together. And suppose we get winds with an average velocity of, say, twenty kilometers an hour . . . A fifty-hour flight—and we’re out of this mess!”
“And probably into a worse one,” grumbled Su Lin, but smiling as she spoke.
But the supply of adhesive, they discovered, was sufficient only for making the odd repairs. There was not nearly enough to gum together pieces of fabric to make a balloon large enough to support three persons. The helium situation was better—but what would they have to put the lighter-than-air gas in?
Grimes said, “With luck we might be able to make a reasonably airworthy one-man balloon. With luck that one man might make it, then come back to rescue the others . . .”
“A one-woman balloon,” said Su Lin.
“After we’ve made the thing.” said Grimes, “we’ll decide who’s to go.”