at the time, and Barlennan or whoever was on duty could hardly have helped hearing me.”
“Then there is a reasonable chance that Barlennan’s lack of comment was a polite attempt to avoid embarrassing you, to gloss over what may have seemed to him a silly mistake?”
“I suppose it’s possible.” Easy could not make herself sound anything but doubtful, but even she knew that her opinion was unlikely to be objective. “Then I think,” Aucoin said slowly and thoughtfully, “that I’d better talk to Barlennan myself. You say nothing more has happened at the Esket since Cavanaugh saw those objects rolling?”
“I haven’t seen anything. The bridge set, of course, is looking out into darkness, but the other three are lighted perfectly well and have shown no change except that one.”
“All right. Barlennan knows our language well enough, in my experience, so that I won’t need you to translate.”
“Oh, no; he’ll understand you. You mean you’d rather I left?”
“No, no, certainly not. In fact, it would be better if you listened and warned me if you thought there might be any misunderstanding developing.” Aucoin reached for the Settlement microphone switch, but glanced once more at Easy before closing it. “You don’t mind, do you, if I make sure of Barlennan’s opinion about your identification of Kabremm? I think our main problem is what to do about the Kwembly, but I’d like to settle that point too. After you have brought the matter up with him, I’d hate Barlennan to get the idea that we were trying to, well, censor anything, to phrase it the way Ib did at the meeting.” He turned away and sent his call toward Dhrawn. Barlennan was in the communicator chamber at the Settlement, so no time was lost reaching him. Aucoin identified himself, once he was sure the commander was at the other end, and began his speech. Easy, Ib, and Boyd found it annoyingly repetitious, but they had to admire the skill with which the planner emphasized his own ideas. Essentially, he was trying to forestall any suggestion that another vehicle be sent to the rescue of the Kwembly, without suggesting such a thing himself. It was a very difficult piece of language manipulation, even though the matter had been uppermost in Aucoin’s mind ever since the conference, so that while it was anything but an impromptu speech, it certainly had merit as a work of art, as Ib remarked later. He did mention Easy’s identification of Kabremm to the commander, but so fleetingly that she almost failed to recognize the item. He didn’t actually say that she must have been mistaken, but he was obviously attaching no importance to the incident. It was a pity, as Easy remarked later, that such polished eloquence was so completely wasted. Of course Aucoin had no more way of knowing than did the other human beings that the identification of Kabremm was Barlennan’s main current worry, that for two hours he had been concerned with nothing else. Faced with the imminent collapse of his complex scheme and, as he suddenly realized with embarrassment, having no ready alternative, he had employed those hours in furious and cogent thought. By the time Aucoin had called, Barlennan had the first steps of another plan. He was waiting so eagerly for a chance to put it into operation that he paid little attention to the planner’s beautifully selected words. When a pause came, Barlennan had his own speech ready, though it had remarkably little to do with what had just been said. The pause had not actually been meant as time for an answer; Aucoin had taken a moment to review mentally what he had covered and what should come next. Mersereau, however, caught him as he was about to resume talking. “That break was long enough to let Barlennan assume you had finished and wanted an answer,” he said. “Better wait. He’ll probably have started talking before whatever you were just going to say gets down there.” The administrator obediently waited; a convention was, after all, a convention. He was prepared to be sarcastic if Mersereau were wrong, but the Mesklinite commander?s voice came through on the scheduled second?closer to it than they would have been willing to bet, Ib and Easy thought later. “I’ve been thinking deeply ever since Mrs. Hoffman told me about Kabremm,” he said, “and I’ve been able to come up with only one theory. As you know, we’ve always had to carry in mind the possibility that there was an intelligent species here on Dhrawn. Your scientists were certain there was highly organized life even before the landing, because of the oxygen-rich air, they said. I know we haven’t run into anything but simple plants and practically microscopic animals, but the Esket had ventured farther into Low Alpha than any of the other cruisers, and conditions are different there; certainly the temperature is higher, and we don’t know how that may change other factors. “Until now, the chance that the Esket had met intelligent opposition was only one possibility, with no more to support it than any other idea we could dream up. However, as your own people have pointed out repeatedly, none of her crew could have lived this long without the cruiser’s support system or something like it. They certainly couldn’t have travelled from where the Esket still is, as far as we can tell, to Dondragmer’s neighborhood. It seems to me that Kabremm’s presence there is convincing evidence that Destigmet’s crew has encountered and been captured by natives of Dhrawn. I don’t know why Kabremm was free enough to meet that search party; maybe he escaped, but it’s hard to see how he would have dared to try under the circumstances. More likely they sent him deliberately to make contact. I wish very much that you’d pass this idea along to Dondragmer for his opinion, and have him find out what he can from Kabremm, if he is still available. You haven’t told me whether he was still with the search party or not. Will you do that?” Several pieces fell into place in Ib Hoffman’s mental jigsaw puzzle. His silent applause went unnoticed, even by Easy.
13: FACT IS STRANGE, FICTION CONVINCING
Barlennan was quite pleased with his speech. He had not told a single falsehood; the worst he could be accused of was fuzzy thinking. Unless some humans were already actively suspicious, there would be no reason for them not to pass on the “theory” to the Kwembly’s captain, thus telling him the line that Barlennan proposed to follow. Dondragmer could be trusted to play up properly, especially if the hint that Kabremm might not be available for further questioning were transmitted to him. It was too bad, in a way, to spring the “native menace” so long before he had meant to; it would have been much nicer to let the human beings invent it for themselves, but any plan which couldn’t be modified to suit new circumstances was a poor plan, Barlennan told himself. Aucoin was taken very much aback. He had personally had no doubt whatever that Easy was mistaken, since he had long ago written the Esket completely off, in his own mind, and Batlennan’s taking her opinion seriously had been a bad jolt. The administrator knew that Easy was by far the best qualified person in the station to make such a recognition; he had not, however, expected the Mesklinites themselves to be aware of this. He blamed himself for not paying much more attention to the casual conversation between human observers (especially Easy) and the Mesklinites over the past few months. He had let himself get out of touch, a cardinal administrative sin. He could see no reason for denying Barlennan’s request, however. He glanced at the others. Easy and Mersereau were looking expectantly at him; the woman had her hand on the microphone selector in her chair arm as though about to call Dondragmer. Her husband had a half-smile on his face which puzzled Aucoin slightly for a moment, but as their eyes met Hoffman nodded as though he had been analyzing the Mesklinite’s theory and found it reasonable. The planner hesitated a moment longer, then spoke into his microphone. “We’ll do that right away, Commander.” He nodded to Easy, who promptly changed her selector switch and began talking. Benj returned just as she started, obviously bursting with information, but he restrained himself when he saw that a conversation with the Kwembly was already in progress. His father watched the boy as Easy relayed the Barlennan theory, and had some difficulty in concealing his amusement. It was so obvious that Benj was swallowing the idea whole. Well, he was young, and several of his elders seemed a bit uncritical too. “Barlennan wants your thoughts on this possibility, and especially any more information you may have obtained from Kabremm,” concluded Easy. “That’s all — no, wait.” Benj had caught her attention. “My son has come back from the aerology lab, and seems to have something for you.”
“Mr. McDevitt has made one run with the new measures added to the earlier data and is making a second now,” Benj said without preamble. “According to the first, he was right about the reason for the melting and freezing of your lake, and the nature of the clouds which Stakendee has encountered. The chances are better than even that condensation from these will increase, and make the stream near you bigger. He suggests that you check very carefully, as he mentioned before, the time the clouds reach the Kwembly. As he guessed, they are evaporating from adiabatic heating as the air carrying them comes down the ground slope. He says that the later they are in getting to you, the worse the flood will be when it does. I don’t see why myself, but that’s what the computer implies. He said to be sure to remind you that this was just another tentative calculation, just as likely to be wrong as any of the earlier ones. He went into a long speech about all the reasons he couldn’t be
