The Planet Explorer Page 18

  “Beg pardon, sir,” he said. “What's the weather forecast?"

  “Continued fair,” said Sandringham pleasantly. “That's why I had Bordman and Werner come down. Three heads are better than one. I've gambled their lives on their brains."

  Bordman continued to scratch the brown dog's ears. Werner licked his lips. Young Barnes looked from one to another of them. Then he looked back at the Sector Chief.

  “Sir,” he said. “I—I think the odds are pretty good. Mr. Bordman, sir—he'll manage!"

  Then he flushed hotly at his own presumption in saying something consoling to a Senior Chief. It was comparable to telling him how to top off his vacuum-suit tanks.

  But the Sector Chief nodded in grave approval and turned to Bordman to hear what he had to say.

  * * * *

  The leeward side of the island sloped gently into the water. From a boat offshore—say, a couple of miles out—the shoreline looked low and flat and peaceful. There were houses in view, and boats afloat. But they were much smaller than those that had been towing a twenty-mile-long oil-slick out to sea. These boats did not ply back and forth. Most of them seemed anchored. On some of them there was activity. Men went overboard, without splashing, and brought things up from the ocean bottom and dumped them inside the hulls. At long intervals men emerged from underwater and sat on the sides of the boats and smoked with an effect of leisure.

  The sun shone, and the land was green, and a seeming of vast tranquility hung over the whole seascape. But the small Survey-personnel reaction-boat moved in toward the shore, and the look of things changed. At a mile, a mass of green that had seemed to be trees growing down to the water's edge became a thicket of tumbled trunks and overset branches where a tree-thicket had collapsed. At half a mile the water was opaque. There were things floating in it: the roof of a house, the leaves of an ornamental shrub, with nearby its roots showing at the surface, washed clean. A child's toy bobbed past the boat. It looked horribly pathetic. There were the exotic planes and angles of three wooden steps, floating in the ripples of the great ocean.

  “Ignoring the imminent explosion of the fuel-store,” said Bordman, “we need to find out something about what has to be done to the soil to stop its creeping. I hope you remembered, Lieutenant, to ask a great many useless questions."

  “Yes, sir,” said Barnes. “I tried to. I asked everything I could think of."

  “Those boats yonder?"

  Bordman indicated a boat from which something like a wire basket splashed into the water as he gestured.

  “A garden-boat, sir,” said Barnes. “On this side of the island the sea-bottom slopes so gradually that there are sea-gardens on the bottom. Shellfish from Earth do not thrive, sir, but there are edible sea-plants. The gardeners cultivate them as on land."

  Bordman reached overside and carefully took his twentieth sample of the seawater. He squinted, and estimated the distance to shore.

  “I shall try to imagine someone wearing a diving-mask and using a hoe,” he said dryly. “What's the depth here?"

  “We're half a mile out, sir,” said Barnes. “It should be about sixty feet. The bottom seems to have about a three percent grade, sir. That's the angle of repose of the mud. There's no sand to make a steeper slope possible."

  “Three percent's not bad!"

  Bordman looked pleased. He picked up one of his earlier samples and tilted it, checking the angle at which the sediment came to rest. The bottom mud, here, was essentially the same as the soil of the land. But the soil of the land was definitely colloid. In seawater, obviously, it sank because of the salinity which made suspension difficult.

  “You see the point, eh?” he asked. When Barnes shook his head, Bordman explained. “Probably for my sins I've had a good deal to do with swamp-planets. The mud of a salt-swamp is quite different from a freshwater swamp. The essential trouble with the people ashore is that by their irrigation they've contrived an island-wide swamp which happens to be upside down, the swamp at the bottom. So the question is, can it acquire the properties of a salt-swamp instead of a freshwater swamp without killing all the vegetation on the surface? That's why I'm after these samples. As we go inshore the water should be fresher, on a shallowing shore like this with drainage in this direction."

  He gestured to the Survey private at the stern of the boat.

  “Closer in, please."

  Barnes said:

  “Sir, motorboats are forbidden inshore. The vibrations."

  Bordman shrugged.

  “We will obey the rule. I've probably samples enough. How far out do the mudflats run, at the surface?"

  “About two hundred yards at the surface, sir. The mud's about the consistency of thick cream. You can see where the ripples stop, sir."

  Bordman stared. He turned his eyes away.

  “Er—sir,” said Barnes unhappily. “May I ask—?"

  Bordman said dryly:

  “You may. But the answer's pure theory. This information will do no good at all unless all the rest of the problem we face is solved. However, solving the rest of the problem will do no good if this part remains unsolved. You see?"

  “Yes, sir. But the other parts seem more urgent."

  Bordman shrugged.

  There was a shout from a nearby boat. Men were pointing ashore. Bordman jerked his eyes to the shoreline.

  A section of seemingly solid ground moved slowly toward the water. Its forefront seemed to disintegrate, and a slow-moving swell moved out over the rippleless border of the sea, where mudbanks like thick cream reached the surface.

  The moving mass was a good half-mile in width. Its outer edge dissolved in the sea, and the top tilted, and green vegetation leaned downward and subsided into the water. It was remarkably like the way an ingot of non-ferrous metal slides into the pool made by its own melting.

  But the aftermath was somehow horrifying. When the tumbled soil was dissolved and the grass undulated like a floating meadow on the water, there remained a jagged shallow gap in the land-bank. There were irregularities: vertical striations and unevennesses in the exposed, broken soil.

  Bordman snatched up glasses and put them to his eyes. The shore seemed to leap toward him. He saw the harsh outlines of the temporary cliff go soft. The bottom ceased to look like soil. It glistened. It moved outward in masses which grew rounded as they swelled. They flowed after the now-vanished fallen stuff, into the water. The top-soil was suddenly undercut. The wetter material under it flowed away, leaving a ledge which bore carefully tended flowering shrubs—Bordman could see specks of color which were their blossoms—and a brightly-colored, small, trim house in which some family had lived.

  The flow-away of the deeper soil made a greater, more cavernous hollow beneath the surface. It began to collapse. The house teetered, fell, smashed. More soil dropped down, and more, and more.

  Presently there was a depression, a sort of valley leading inland away from the sea, in what had been a rampart of green at the water's edge. It was still green, but through the glasses Bordman could see that trees had fallen, and a white-painted fence was splintered. And there was still movement.

  The movement slowed and slowed, but it was not possible to say when it stopped. In reality, it did not stop. The island's soil was still flowing into the ocean.

  Barnes drew a deep breath.

  “I thought that was it, sir,” he said shakily. “I mean—that the whole island would start sliding."

  “The ground's a bit more water-soaked down here,” Bordman said. “Inland the bottom-soil's not nearly as fluid as here. But I'd hate to have a really heavy rainfall right now!"

  Barnes’ mind jerked back to the Sector Chief's office.

  “The drumming would set off the ship-fuel?"

  “Among other things,” said Bordman. “Yes.” Then he said abruptly: “How good are you at precision measurements? I've messed around on swamp-planets. I know a bit too much about what I ought to find, which is not good for accuracy. Can you take these bottles and
measure the rate of sedimentation and plot it against salinity?"

  “Y-yes, sir. I'll try."

  “If we had soil-coagulants enough,” said Bordman, “we could handle that damned upside-down swamp the civilians have so carefully made here. But we haven't got it! The freshened seawater they've been irrigating with is practically mineral-free! I want to know how much mineral content in the water would keep the swamp-mud from acting like wet soap. It's entirely possible that we'd have to make the soil too salty to grow anything, in order to anchor it. But I want to know!"

  Barnes said uncomfortably:

  “Wouldn't you—wouldn't you have to put the minerals in irrigation-water to get them down to the swamp?"

  Bordman grinned, surprisingly.

  “You've got promise, Barnes! Yes, I would. And it would increase the rate of slide before it stopped it. Which could be another problem. But it was good work to think of it! When we get back to Headquarters, you commandeer a laboratory and make those measurements for me."

  “Yes, sir,” said Barnes.

  “We'll start back now,” said Bordman.

  The recreation-boat obediently turned. It went out to sea until the water flowing past its hull was crystal-clear. And Bordman seemed to relax. On the way they passed more small boats. Many of them were gardeners’ boats, from which men dived with diving-masks to tend or harvest the cultivated garden-patches not too far down. But many were pleasure-boats, from double-hulled sailing craft intended purely for sport, to sturdy, though small, cabin cruisers which could venture far out to sea, or even around to the windward of the island for sport-fishing. All the pleasure-craft were crowded—there were usually some children—and it was noticeable that on each on there were always some faces turned toward the shore.

  “That,” said Bordman, “makes for emotional thinking. These people know their danger. So they've packed their children and their wives into these little cockleshells to try to save them. They're waiting offshore here to find out if they're doomed regardless. I wouldn't say—” He nodded toward a delicately designed twin-hull sailer with more children than adults aboard—"I wouldn't call that a good substitute for an Ark!"

  Young Barnes fidgeted. The boat turned again and went parallel to the shore toward where Headquarters land came down to the sea. The ground was firmer there. There had been no irrigation. Lateral seepage had done some damage at the end of the reserve, but the major part of the shoreline was unbroken, unchanged solid ground, looming above the beach. There was, of course, no sand at the edge of the water. There had been no weathering of rock to produce it. When this island was upraised, its coating of hardened ooze protected the stone, the lee-side waves merely lapped upon bare, curdled rock. The wharf for pleasure-boats went out on metal pilings into deep water.

  “Excuse me, sir,” said young Barnes, “but—if the fuel blows, it'll be pretty bad, won't it?"

  “That's the understatement of the century,” Bordman commented. “Yes. It will. Why?"

  “You've something in mind to try to save the rest of the island. Nobody else seems to know what to do. If—if I may say so, sir, your safety is pretty important. And you could do your work on the cliffs, and—if I could stay at Headquarters and—"

  He stopped, appalled at his own presumption in suggesting that he could substitute for a Senior Officer even as a message-boy, and even for his convenience or safety. He began to stammer:

  “I m-mean, sir, n-not that I'm capable of it—"

  “Stop stammering,” grunted Bordman. “There aren't two separate problems. There's one which is the compound of the two. I'm staying at Headquarters to try something on the ship-fuel side, Werner will specialize on the rest of the island since he hasn't come up with anything but shifting people to the ice-pack. And the situation isn't hopeless! If there's an earthquake or a storm, of course, we'll be wiped out. But short of one of those calamities, we can save part of the island. I don't know how much, but some. You make those measurements. If you're doubtful, get a Headquarters man to duplicate them. Then give me both sets."

  “Y-yes, sir,” said young Barnes.

  “And,” said Bordman, “never try to push your ranking officer into a safe place, even if you're willing to take his risk! Would you like it if a man under you tried to put you in a safe place while he took the chance that was yours?"

  “N-no, sir!” admitted the very junior lieutenant. “But—"

  “Make those measurements!” snapped Bordman.

  The boat came into the dock. Bordman got out and went to Sandringham's office.

  Sandringham was in the act of listening to somebody in the phone-screen, who apparently was on the thin edge of hysteria. The brown dog was sprawled asleep on the rug.

  When the man in the vision-screen panted to a stop, Sandringham said calmly:

  “I am assured that before the soil of the island is too far gone, measures now in preparation will be applied to good effect. A Senior Survey Officer is now preparing remedial measures. He is—ah—a specialist in problems of exactly this nature."

  “But we can't wait!” panted the civilian fiercely. “I'll proclaim a planetary emergency! We'll take over the reserve area by force! We have to—"

  “If you try,” Sandringham told him grimly, “I'll mount paralysis-guns to stop you!” He said with icy precision: “I urged the planetary government to go easy on this irrigation! You yourself denounced me in the Planetary Council for trying to interfere in civilian affairs. Now you want to interfere in Survey affairs! I resent it as much as you did, and with much better reason!"

  “Murderer!” panted the civilian. “Murderer!"

  Sandringham snapped off the phone-screen. He swung his chair and nodded to Bordman.

  “That was the planetary president,” he said.

  Bordman sat down. The brown dog blinked his eyes open and then got up and shook himself.

  “I'm holding off those idiots!” said the Sector Chief in suppressed fury. “I daren't tell him it's more dangerous here than outside! If or when that fuel blows—do you realize that the falling of a single tree-limb might set off an explosion in the Reserve-area here that would—But you do know."

  “Yes,” admitted Bordman.

  He did know. Some hundreds of tons of ship-fuel going off would destroy this entire end of the island. And almost certainly the concussion would produce violent movement of the rest of the island's surface. But he was uncomfortable about putting forward his own ideas. He was not a good salesman. He suspected his own opinions until he had proved them with painstaking care, for fear of having them adopted on his post record rather than because they were sound. And then, too, this plan involved junior ranks being informed about the proposal. If they accepted a dubious plan on high authority, and the plan miscarried, it made them share in the mistake. Which hurt their self-confidence. Young Barnes, now, would undoubtedly obey any order and accept any hint blindly, and Bordman honestly did not know why. But as a matter of the training of junior ranks—

  “About the work to be done,” said Bordman, “I imagine the seawater freshening plants have closed down?"

  “They have!” said Sandringham. “They insisted on piling them up over my protests. Now if anybody proposed operating one, they'd scream to high heaven!"

  “What was done with the minerals taken out of the seawater?” Bordman asked.

  “You know how the fresheners work!” said Sandringham. “They pump seawater in at one end, and at the other one pipe yields fresh water, and the other heavy brine. They dump the heavy brine back overboard and the fresh water's pumped up and distributed through the irrigation systems."

  “It's too bad some of the salts weren't stored,” said Bordman. “Could a freshener be started up again?"

  Sandringham stared. Then he said:

  “Oh, the civilians would love that! No! If any man started up a water-freshener, the civilians would kill him and smash it!"

  “But I think we'll need one. We'll want to irrigate some of the Reserve area."
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  “My God! What for?” demanded Sandringham. He paused. “No! Don't tell me! Let me try to work it out."

  There was silence. The dog blinked at Bordman. He held out his hand. The dog came sedately to him and bent his head to be scratched.

  After a considerable time, the Sector Chief growled:

  “I give up. Do you want to tell me?"

  Bordman nodded. He said:

  “In a sense, the trouble is that there's a swamp underground, made by irrigation. It slides. It's really a swamp upside down. On Soris II we had a very odd problem, only the swamp was right-side-up there. We'd several hundred square miles of swamp that could be used if we could drain it. We built a soil-dam around it. You know the trick. You bore two rows of holes twenty feet apart and put soil-coagulant in them. It's an old, old device. They used it a couple of hundred years back on Earth. The coagulate seeps out in all directions and coagulates the dirt. Makes it watertight. It swells with water and fills the spaces between with soil-particles. In a week or two there's a watertight barrier, made of soil, going down to bedrock. You might call it a coffer-dam. No water can seep through. On Soris II we knew that if we could get the water out of the mud inside this coffer-dam, we'd have cultivable ground."

  Sandringham said skeptically:

  “But it called for ten years’ pumping, eh? When mud doesn't move, pumping is easy!"

  “We wanted the soil,” said Bordman. “And we didn't have ten years. The Soris II colony was supposed to relieve population-pressure on another planet. The pressure was terrific. We had to be ready to receive some colonists in eight months. We had to get the water out quicker than it could be pumped. And there was another problem mixed up with it. The swamp vegetation was pretty deadly. It had to be gotten rid of, too. So we made the dam and—well—took certain measures, and then we irrigated it. But we had dry ground in four months, with the swamp-vegetation killed and turning back to humus."

  “I ought to read your reports,” said Sandringham dourly. “I'm too busy, ordinarily. But I should read them. How'd you get rid of the water?"