Part 13

"Thank you, sir! Hell hath no fury like a ranking officer caught in a blunder! He'd have twisted my tail for his mistake, sir, and it could have been bad!" Then he paused. He said uneasily, "But--beg pardon, sir. I haven't any promising ideas. Not that I know of!"

"You have an hour to develop one," Bordman told him.

Internally, Bordman was startled. There were few occasions on which even one Senior Officer was called in to Sector Headquarters. Interstellar distances being what they were, and thirty light-speeds being practically the best available, Senior Officers necessarily acted pretty much as independent authorities. To call one man in meant all his other work had to go by the board for a matter of months. But two! And Werner?

Werner was getting to ground first. If there was something serious ashore, Werner would make a great point of arriving first, even if only by hours. A keen sort of person in giving the right impression. He'd risen in the Service faster than Bordman. That other Lawlor field would have been his ship getting out of the way.

The young officer at his elbow fidgeted.

"Beg pardon, sir. What sort of idea should I develop, sir? I'm not sure I understand--"

"It's rather annoying to have to stay parked in free fall," said Bordman patiently. "And it's always a good practice to review annoying situations and see if they can be bettered."

Barnes' forehead wrinkled.

"We could land much quicker on rockets, sir. And even when the landing-grid reaches out for us, they'll have to handle us very cautiously or they'd break our necks, since we've no gravity-coils."

Bordman nodded. Barnes was thinking straight enough, but it takes young officers a long time to think of thinking straight. They have to obey so many orders unquestioningly that they tend to stop doing anything else. Yet at each rise in grade some slight trace of increased capacity to think is required. In order to reach really high rank, an officer has to be capable of thinking which simply isn't possible unless he's kept in practice on the way up.

Young Barnes looked up, startled.

"Look here, sir!" he said, surprised. "If it takes them an hour to let down Senior Officer Werner from two planetary diameters, it'll take much longer to let us down from out here!"

"True," said Bordman.

"And you don't want to spend three hours descending, sir, after waiting an hour for him!"

"I don't," admitted Bordman. He could have given orders, of course. But if a junior officer were spurred to the practice of thinking, it meant that some day he'd be a better senior officer. And Bordman knew how desperately few men were really adequate for high authority. Anything that could be done to increase the number--

Young Barnes blinked.

"But it doesn't matter to the landing-grid how far out we are!" he said in an astonished voice. "They could lock on to us at ten diameters, or at one! Once they lock the field-focus on us, when they move it they move us."

Bordman nodded again.

"So by the time they've got that other boat landed--why--I can use rockets and get down to one diameter myself, sir! And they can lock onto us there and let us down a few thousand miles only. So we can get to ground half an hour after the other boat's down instead of four hours from now."

"Just so," agreed Bordman. "At a cost of a little thought and a little fuel. You do have a promising idea after all, Lieutenant. Suppose you carry it out?"

Young Barnes glanced at Bordman's safety-strap. He threw over the fuel-ready lever and conscientiously waited the few seconds for the first molecules of fuel to be catalyzed cold. Once firing started, they'd be warmed to detonation-readiness in the last few millimetres of the injection-gap.

"Firing, sir," he said respectfully.

There was the curious sound of a rocket blasting in emptiness, when the sound is conveyed only by the rocket-tube's metal. There was the smooth, pushing sensation of acceleration. The tiny ship's boat swung and aimed down at the planet. Lieutenant Barnes leaned forward and punched the ship's computer.

"I hope you'll excuse me, sir," he said. "I should have thought that out myself without prompting. But problems like this don't turn up very often, sir. As a rule it's wisest to follow precedents as if they were orders."

Bordman said drily:

"To be sure! But one reason for the existence of junior officers is the fact that some day there will have to be new senior ones."

Barnes considered. Then he said surprisedly:

"I never thought of it that way, sir. Thank you."

He continued to punch the computer keys, frowning. Bordman relaxed in his seat, held there by the gentle acceleration and the belt. He'd had nothing by which to judge the reason for his summoning to Headquarters. He had very little now. But there was trouble of some sort down below. Two senior officers dragged from their own work. Werner, now ... Bordman preferred not to estimate Werner. He disliked the man, and would be biased. But he was able, though definitely on the make. And there was himself. They'd been called to a headquarters where no ship was to be landed by landing-grid, nor any rocket to come to ground. A landing-grid could pluck a ship out of space ten planet-diameters out, and draw it with gentle violence shoreward, and land it lightly as a feather. A landing-grid could take the heaviest, loaded freighter and stop it in orbit and bring it down at eight gravities. But the one below wouldn't land even a tiny Survey ship! And a landing-boat was forbidden to come down on its rockets!

Bordman arranged those items in his mind. He knew the planet below, of course. When he got his Senior rating he'd spent six months at Headquarters learning procedures and practices proper to his increased authority. There was one inhabitable island, two hundred miles long and possibly forty wide. There was no other usable ground outside the Arctic. The one occupied island had gigantic sheer cliffs on its windward side, where a great slab of bed-rock had split along some submarine fault and tilted upward above the surface. Those cliffs were four thousand feet high, and from them the island sloped very gently and very gradually until its leeward shore slipped under the restless sea. Sector Headquarters had been placed here because it seemed that civilians would not want to colonize so limited a world. But there were civilians, because there was Headquarters. And now every inch of ground was cultivated, and there was irrigation and intensive farming and some hydroponic establishments. However, Sector Headquarters included a vast reserve-area on which a space-fleet might be marshalled in case of need. The over-crowded civilians were bitter because of the great uncultivated area the Survey needed for storage and possible emergency use. Even when Bordman was here, years back, there was bitterness because the Survey crowded the civil economy which had been based on it.

Bordman considered all these items, and came to an uncomfortable conclusion. Presently he looked up. The planet loomed larger. Much larger.

"I think you'd better lose all planetward velocity before we hook on," he observed. "The landing-grid crew might have trouble focusing on us so close if we're moving."

"Yes, sir," said the young officer.

"There's some sort of merry hell below," said Bordman. "It looks bad that they won't let a ship come down by grid. It looks worse that they won't let this one land on its rockets." He paused. "I doubt they'll risk lifting us off again."

Young Barnes finished his computations. He looked satisfied. He glanced at the now-gigantic planet below, and deftly adjusted the course of the tiny boat. Then he jerked his head around.

"Excuse me, sir. Did you say we mightn't be able to lift off again?"

"I could almost predict that we won't," said Bordman.

"Would you--could you say why, sir?"

"They don't want landings. The trouble is here. If they don't want landings, they won't want launchings. Werner and I were sent for, so presumably we're needed. But apparently there's uneasiness about even our landing. They won't send us off again. I suspect--"

The loud-speaker said tinnily:

"_Calling boat from landing-grid! Calling boat from landing-grid!_"

"Come in," said Barnes, looking uneasily at Bordman.

"_Correct your course!_" commanded the voice. "_You are not to land on rockets under any circumstances! This is an order from the Sector Chief himself. Stand off! We will be ready to lock on and land you gently in about fifteen minutes. But meanwhile stand off!_"

"Yes, sir," said young Barnes.

Bordman reached over and took the microphone.

"Bordman speaking," he said. "I'd like information. What's the trouble down there that we can't use our rockets?"

"_Rockets are noisy, sir. Even boat-rockets. We have orders to eliminate all physical vibration possible, sir. But I am ordered not to give details on a transmitter, sir._"

"I sign off," said Bordman, drily.

He pushed the microphone away. He deplored his own lack of aggressiveness. Werner, now, would have pulled his rank and insisted on being informed. But Bordman couldn't help believing that there was a reason for orders that overruled his own.

The young officer swung the rocket end-for-end. The sensation of pressure against the back of Bordman's seat increased.

Minutes later the speaker said:

"_Grid to boat. Prepare for lock-on._"

"Ready, sir," said Barnes.

The small boat shuddered and leaped crazily. It spun. It oscillated violently through seconds-long arcs in emptiness. Very gradually the oscillations died. There was a momentary sensation of the faint tugging of planetary weight, which is somehow subtly different from the feel of artificial gravity. Then the cosmos turned upside down as the boat was drawn swiftly toward the watery planet below it.

Some minutes later, young Barnes spoke:

"Beg pardon, sir," he said apologetically. "I must be stupid, sir, but I can't imagine any reason why vibrations or noises should make any difference on a planet. How could it do harm?"

"This is an ocean-planet," said Bordman. "It might make people drown."

The young officer flushed and turned his head away. And Bordman reflected that the young were always sensitive. But he did not speak again. When they landed in the spidery, half-mile-high landing-grid, Barnes would find out whether he was right or not.

He did. And Bordman was right. The people on Canna III were anxious to avoid vibrations because they were afraid of drowning.

Their fears seemed to be rather well-founded.

* * * * *

Three hours after landing, Bordman moved gingerly over grayish muddy rock, with a four-thousand-foot sheer drop some twenty yards away. The ragged edge of a cliff fell straight down for the better part of a mile. Far below, the sea rippled gently. Bordman saw a long, long line of boats moving slowly out to sea. They towed something between them which reached from boat to boat in exaggerated catenary curves. The boats moved in line abreast straight out from the cliffs, towing this floating, curved thing between them.

Bordman regarded them for a moment and then inspected the grayish mud underfoot. He lifted his eyes to the inland side of this peculiar stretch of mountainside muddiness. There was a mast on the rock not far away. It held up what looked like a vision-camera.

Young Barnes said:

"Excuse me, sir. What are those boats doing?"

"They're towing an oil-slick out to sea," said Bordman absently, "by towing a floating line of some sort between them. There isn't enough oil to maintain the slick, and it's blown land-ward. So they tow it out to sea again. It holds down the seas. Every time, of course, they lose some of it."

"But--"

"There are trade winds," said Bordman, not looking to sea-ward at all. "They always blow in the same direction, nearly. They blow three-quarters of the way around the planet, and they build up seas as they blow. Normally, the swells that pound against this cliff, here, will be a hundred feet and more from trough to crest. They'll throw spray ten times that high, of course, and once when I was here before, spray came over the cliff-top. The impacts of the waves are--heavy. In a storm, if you put your ear to the ground on the leeward shore, you can hear the waves smash against these cliffs. It's vibration."

Bares looked uneasily at the cliff's edge and the line of boats pushing over an ocean whose waves seemed less than ripples from nearly a mile above them. But the line of boats was incredibly long. It was twenty miles in length at the least.

"The slick holds down the waves," Barnes guessed. "It works best in deep water, I believe. The ancients knew it. Oil on the waters." He considered. "Working hard to prevent vibrations! Are they really so dangerous, sir?"

Bordman nodded inland. A quarter mile from the edge of the cliff there was a peculiar, broken, riven rampart of soil. It might have been forty feet high, once. Now it was shattered and cracked. It had the look of having been pulled away from where it was withdrawn. There were vertical breaks in its edges and broken-off masses left behind. At one place, a clump of perhaps a quarter-acre had not followed the rest, and trees leaned drunkenly from its top, and at the edge had fallen outward. All along the top of the stone cliff as far as the eye could see there was this singular retreat of soil and vegetation from the cliff's edge.

Bordman stooped and picked up a bit of the mud underfoot. He rubbed it between his fingers. It yielded like modelling clay. He dipped a finger into a gray, greasy-seeming puddle. He looked at the thick liquid on his finger and then rubbed it against his other palm. Young Barnes duplicated this last action.

"It feels soapy, sir!" he said blankly. "Like wet soap!"

"Yes," said Bordman. "That's the first problem here."

He turned to a ground-service Survey private, and jerked his head along the coast-line.

"How much have other places slipped?"

"Anywhere from this much, sir," said the private, "to two miles and upward. There's one place where it's moving at a regular rate. Four inches an hour, sir. It was three-and-a-half yesterday."

Bordman nodded.

"Hm. We'll go back to Headquarters. Nasty business!"

He plodded over the messy footing toward the vehicle which had brought him here. It was not an ordinary ground car. Instead of wires or caterwheels, it rolled upon flaccid, partly-inflated five-foot rollers. They would be completely unaffected by roughness or slipperiness of terrain and if the vehicle fell overboard it would float. It was thickly coated with the gray mud of this cliff-top.

As he moved along, Bordman was able to see the pattern of the rock underneath the mud. It was curiously contorted, like something that had curdled rather than cooled. And, as a matter of fact, it was believed to have solidified slowly under water at such monstrous pressure that even molten rock could not make it burst into steam. But it was above-water now.

Bordman climbed into the vehicle, and Barnes followed him. The bolster-truck turned and moved toward the broken barrier of earth. Its five-foot flabby rollers seemed rather to flow over than to surmount obstacles. Great lumps of drier dirt dented them and did not disintegrate. There were no stones.

Bordman frowned to himself. The bolster-truck more or less flowed up the crumbling, inexplicably drawing-back mass of soil. Atop it, things looked almost normal. Almost. There was a highway leading away from the cliff. At first glance it seemed perfect. But it was cracked down the middle for a hundred yards, and then the crack meandered off to the side and was gone. There was a great tree, which leaned drunkenly. A mile along the roadway its surface bucked as if something had pressed irresistibly upward from below. The truck rolled over the break.

It was notable that the motion of the truck was utterly smooth. It made no vibration at all. But even so it slowed before it moved through a place where buildings--houses and a shop or two--clustered closely together on each side of the road.

There were people in and about the house, but they were doing nothing at all. Some of them stared at the Survey truck with hostility. Some others deliberately turned their backs to it. There were vehicles out of shelter and ready to be used, but none was moving. All were pointed in the direction from which the bolster-truck had come.

The truck went on. Presently the extraordinary flatness of the landscape became apparent. It was possible to see a seemingly illimitable distance. The ocean forty miles away showed as a thread of blue beneath the horizon. The island was an almost perfectly plane tilted surface. There was no hill visible anywhere, nor any valleys save the extremely minor gullies worn by rain. Even they had been filled in, dammed, and tied in to irrigation systems.

There was a place where there was a row of trees along such a water-course. Half the row was fallen, and a part of the rest was tilted. The remainder stood upright and firm. All the vegetation was perfectly familiar. Most colonies have some vegetation, at least, directly descended from the mother-planet Earth. But this island on Canna III had been above-water perhaps no more than three or four thousand years. There had been no time for local vegetation to develop. When the Survey took it over, there was nothing but tidal seaweed, only one variety of which had been able to extend itself in weblike fashion over the soil above water. Terrestrial plants had wiped it out, and everything was green and human-introduced.

But there was something wrong with the ground. At this place the top of the soil bulged, and tall corn-plants grew extravagantly in different directions. At another, there was a narrow, lipless gash in the ground's surface. An irrigation-ditch poured water into it. It was not filled.

Barnes said:

"Excuse me, sir, but how the devil did this happen?"

"There's been irrigation," said Bordman patiently. "The soil here was all ocean-bottom, once--it used to be what is called globigerinous ooze. There's no sand, and no stones. There's only bed-rock and formerly abyssal mud. And some of it underneath is no longer former. It's globigerinous ooze again."

He waved his hand at the landscape. It had been remarkably tidy, once. Every square foot of ground had been cultivated. The highways were of limited width, and the houses were neat and trim. It was, perhaps, the most completely civilized landscape in the galaxy. Bordman added:

"You said the stuff felt like soap. In a way it's acting like soap. It lies on slightly slanting, effectively smooth rock, like a soap-cake on a sheet of metal that's tilted a bit. And that's the trouble. So long as a cake of soap is dry on the bottom it doesn't move. Even if you pour water on top, like rain, the top will wet, and the water will flow off, but the bottom won't wet until all the soap is dissolved away. While that was the process here, everything was all right. But they've been irrigating."

They passed a row of neat cottages facing the road. One had collapsed completely. The others looked absolutely normal. The bolster-truck went on.

Bordman said, frowning:

"They wanted the water to go into the soil, so they arranged it. A little of that did no harm. Plants growing dried it out again. One tree evaporates thousands of gallons a day in a good trade-wind. There were some landslides in the early days, especially when storm-swells pounded the cliffs, but on the whole the ground was more firmly anchored when first cultivated than it had been before the colonists came."

"But irrigation? The sea's not fresh, is it?"

"Water-freshening plants," said Bordman drily. "Ion-exchange systems. They installed them and had all the fresh water they could wish for. And they wished for a lot. They deep-ploughed, so the water would sink in. They dammed the water-courses. What they did amounted to something like boring holes in that cake of soap I used for an illustration just now. Water went right down to the bottom. What would happen then?"

Barnes said:

"Why the bottom would get wet--and the soap would slide! As if it were greased!"

"Not greased," corrected Bordman. "Soaped. Soap is viscous. That's different, and a lucky difference, too. But the least vibration would encourage movement. And it does. So the population is now walking on eggs. Worse, it's walking on the equivalent of a cake of soap which is getting wetter and wetter on the bottom. It's already sliding as a viscous substance does, reluctantly. But in spite of the oil-slick they're trying to keep in place upwind there's still some battering from the sea. There are still some vibrations in the bed-rock. And so there's a slow, gentle, gradual sliding."

"And they figure," said Barnes, "that locking onto a ship with the landing-grid might be like an earthquake." He stopped. "An earthquake, now--"

"Not much vulcanism on this planet," Bordman told him. "But of course there are tectonic quakes occasionally. They made this island."

Barnes said uneasily:

"I don't think, sir, that I'd sleep well if I lived here."

"You are living here for the moment. But at your age I think you'll sleep."

The bolster-truck turned, following the highway. The road was very even, and the motion of the truck along it was infinitely smooth. Its lack of vibration explained why it was permitted to move when all other vehicles were stopped. But Bordman reflected uneasily that this did not account for the orders of the Sector Chief forbidding the rocket-landing of a ship's boat. It was true enough that the living-surface of the island rested upon slanting stone, and that if the bottom were wet enough that it could slide off into the sea. It already had moved. At least one place was moving at four inches per hour. But that was viscous flow. It would be enhanced by vibration, and assuredly the hammering of seas upon the windward cliff should be lessened by any possible means.

But it did not mean that the sound of a rocket-landing would be disastrous, nor the straining of a landing-grid as it stopped a space-ship in orbit and drew it to ground should produce a landslide. There was something else, though the situation for the island's civilian population was already serious enough. If any really massive movement of the ground did begin, viscous or any other, if any considerable part of the island's surface did begin to move, all of it would go. And the population would go with it. If there were survivors, they could be numbered in dozens.

The tall tamped-earth wall of the Headquarters reserve-area loomed ahead. Sector Headquarters had been established here when there were no other inhabitants. Seeds had been broadcast and trees planted while the Survey buildings were under construction. Headquarters, in fact, had been built upon an uninhabited planet. But colonists followed in the wake of Survey-personnel. Wives and children, and then storekeepers and agriculturists, and presently civilian technicians and ultimately even politicians arrived as the non-Service population grew. Now Sector Headquarters was resented because it occupied one-fourth of the island. It kept too much of the planet's useful surface out of civilian use. And the island was desperately over-crowded.

But it seemed also to be doomed.

As the bolster-truck moved silently toward Headquarters, a hundred-yard section of the wall collapsed. There was an up-surging of dust, and a rumbling of falling, hardened dirt. The truck's driver turned white. A civilian beside the road faced the wall and wrung his hands, and stood waiting to feel the ground under his feet begin to sweep smoothly toward the here-distant sea. A post held up a traffic signal some twenty yards from the gate. It leaned slowly. At a forty-five-degree tilt it checked and hung stationary. Fifty yards from the gate, a new crack appeared across the road.