' 'Is that all? Is that all the man says! What do you want? Flood, pestilence, and earthquakes?'
But it was not all-further inspection showed another thing which would have dismayed them had they not already been as low in spirit as they could get. The jeep's jet ran on liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen. The fuel tanks, insulated and protected from direct radiation, could retain fuel for long periods, but the warm mud had reached them and heated them; the expanding gases had bled out through relief valves. The jeep was out of fuel.
Oscar looked this situation over stonily. 'I wish the Gary had been chemically powered,' he finally commented.
'What of it?' Matt answered. 'We couldn't raise ship if we had all the juice this side of Jupiter.'
The mother-of-many had to be shown before she was convinced that there was anything wrong with the ship. Even then, she seemed only half convinced and somehow vexed with the- cadets for being unsatisfied with the gift of their ship back. Oscar spent much of the return journey trying to repair his political fences with her.
Oscar ate no dinner that night. Even Tex only picked at his food and did not touch his harmonica afterwards. Matt spent the evening silently sitting out a watch in Thurlow's room.
The mother-(c)f-many sent for all three of them the next morning. After formal exchange of greetings she commenced, 'Little mother, is it true that thy Gary is indeed dead, like the other Gary?'
'It is true, gracious mother.'
'Is it true that without a Gary thou canst not find thy way back to thine own people?'
'It is true, wise mother of many; the jungle would destroy us.'
She stopped and gestured to one of her court. The 'daughter' trotted to her with a bundle half as big as the bearer. The city mother took it and invited, or commanded, the cadets to- join her on the dais. She commenced unwrapping. The object inside seemed to have more bandages than a mummy. At long last she had it uncovered and held out to them. 'Is this thine?'
It was a large book. On the cover, in large ornate letters, was:
LOG
of
the
Astarte
Tex looked at it and said, 'Great leaping balk of fire! It can't be.'
Matt stared and whispered, 'It must be. The lost first expedition. They didn't fad-they got here.'
Oscar stared and said nothing at all until the city mother repeated her question impatiently. 'Is this thine?'
'Huh? What? Oh, sure! Wise and gracious mother, this thing belonged to my 'mother's mother's mother.' We are her 'daughters''
'Then it is thine.'
Oscar took it from, her and gingerly opened the brittle pages. They stared at the original entry for 'raise ship'- but most especially at the year entry in the date column-'1971.' 'Holy Moses!' breathed Tex. 'Look at that-just look at it. More than a hundred years ago.'
They thumbed through it. There was page after page of one line entries of 'free fall, position according to plan' which they skipped over rapidly, except for one: 'Christmas day. Carols were sung after the mid-day meal.'
It was the entries after grounding they were after. They were forced to skim them as the mother-of-many was beginning to show impatience: '- climate no worse than the most extreme terrestrial tropics in the rainy season, the dominant life form seems to be a large amphibian. This planet is definitely possible of colonization.'
'-the amphibians have considerable intelligence and seem to talk with each other. They are friendly and an attempt is being made to bridge the semantic gap.'
'Margraves has contracted an infection, apparently fun-goid, which is unpleasantly reminiscent of leprosy. The surgeon is treating it experimentally.'
'-after the funeral muster Hargraves' room was sterilized at 400°.'
The handwriting changed shortly thereafter. The city mother was growing so obviously discontented that they glanced only at the last two entries: '- Johnson continues to fail, but the natives are very helpful-'
'-my left hand is now useless. I have made up my mind to decommission the ship and take my chances in the hands of the natives. I shall take this log with me and add to it, if possible.'
The handwriting was firm and clear; it was their own eyes that blurred it.
The mother-of-many immediately ordered up the party used to ferry the humans in and out of the city. She was not disposed to stop to talk and, once the journey began, there was no opportunity to until they reached dry land.
'Look here, Oz,' Tex started in, as soon as he had shaken off the water, 'do you really think she's taking us to the Astarte?'
'Could be. Probably is.'
'Do you think there is a chance that we will find the ship intact?' asked Matt.
'Not a chance. Not a chance in this world. On one point alone, she couldn't possibly have any fuel left in her tanks. You saw what happened to the jeep. What do you think a century has done to the Astarte?' He paused and looked thoughtful. 'Anyhow, I'm not going to get my hopes up, not again. I couldn't stand it, three times. That's too many.'
'I guess you're right,' agreed Matt. 'It won't do to get excited. She's probably a mound of rust under a covering of vines.'
'Who said anything about not getting excited?' Oscar answered. 'I'm so excited I can hardly talk. But don't think of the Astarte as a possible way to get back; think of her historically.'
'Yow think of it that way,' said Tex. 'I'm a believer and a hoper. I want to get out of this dump.'
'Oh, you'll get out! They'll come find us some day-and then they'll finish the mission we flubbed.'
'Look,' answered Tex, 'couldn't we go off duty and not think about the mission just for the next quarter of a mile? These insects are something fierce-you think about Oscar and I'll think about Mother Jarman's favorite son. I wish I was back in the good old Triplex.'
'You were the guy that was always beefing that the Triplex was a madhouse.'
'So I was wrong. I can be big about it.'
They came to one of the rare rises in the level of the ground, all of ten feet above water level. The natives started to whisper and lisp excitedly among themselves. Matt caught the Venerian word for 'tabu.' 'Did you get that, Oz?' he said in Basic. 'Tabu.'
'Yes. I don't think she told them where she was taking, them.'
The column stopped and spread out; the three cadets moved forward, pushing rank growth aside and stepped in a clearing.
In front of them, her rakish wings festooned in vines and her entire hull sheathed in some translucent substance, was the Patrol Rocket Ship Astarte.
XVII HOTCAKES FOR BREAKFAST
THE CITY MOTHEB was standing near the door of t Astarte, underneath the starboard wing. Two of her people: were working at the door, using bladders to squirt some
liquid around the edges. The translucent layer over the hull melted away wherever the liquid touched it. They grasped a free edge of the skin stuff and began to peel it away. 'Look at that,' said Tex. 'Do you see what they've done? The ship is Venusized.'
His use of the term was loose; an item that has been 'planetized' is one that has been rendered stable against certain typical conditions of the planet concerned, as defined by tests of the Bureau of Standards-for example, an item listed in the colonial edition of the Sears & Montgomery catalog as 'Venusized' is thereby warranted to resist the excessive humidity, the exotic fungi, and certain of the planet's pests. The Astarte was merely encased in a sheath. '
'Looks like it,' agreed Oscar, his voice carefully restrained. 'Sort of a spray-gun job.'
'Five gets you ten it never saw a spray gun. The Venerians did it' Tex slapped at an insect. 'You know what this means, Oz?'
'I'm way ahead of you. Don't get your hopes up. And don't try to get mine up, either. A hundred years is a long
