An excited hooting and general withdrawal from the edge indicated the safe arrival of the first raft, and Lackland blinked as the sailors proceeded to stack several more on top of each other while the cable was being drawn up. Apparently no more time than could be helped was to be wasted. Confident as he was in Barlennan’s judgment, the Earthman suddenly decided he wanted to watch the stack of rafts make the descent. He was on the point of donning his armor when he remembered that it was not necessary; he relaxed again, called Barlennan, and asked him to arrange one or more of the little communicators so that their „eyes” could cover the desired activity. The captain complied immediately, having a sailor lash one of the sets to the scaffold so that it looked almost straight down and placing another on top of the pile of rafts which had just been secured in their rope sling. Lackland switched from one to the other as the operation proceeded. The first was a trifle more disconcerting than he had expected, since the supporting cable was visible for only a few feet from the pickup lens and the load seemed to be floating down without support; the other gave him a view of the cliff face that would
undoubtedly have been highly interesting to a geologist. With the descent half completed, it occurred to him to call Toorey to invite the interested parties to watch. The geology department responded and commented freely during the rest of the process.
Load after load went down, with little variety to make the operation more interesting. Toward the end a longer cable was installed and the lowering was done from below, since the greater part of the brew had now descended; and Lackland had a suspicion of the reason when Barlennan finally turned away from the scene of action and leaped toward the tank. The radio which had been used from that position was permanently mounted, and had not been taken down with the others.
„We have only about two more loads, Charles,” the captain opened. „There will be a sh’ght problem in connection with the last one. We’d like to keep all our gear if possible, which means dismantling and sending down the masts used for our lowering tackle. We don’t want to throw them down because we’re not sure they’d take it — the soil below is very rocky. Would you be willing to get into your armor and lower the final load by hand? I will arrange for it to consist of one raft, those few masts and the associated tackle, and myself.” Lackland was startled by the last item.
„You mean you would trust yourself to my strength, knowing that I’m already under three and a half times my normal gravity and will have the weight of my armor as well?”
„Certainly. The armor will easily be heavy enough to serve as anchor, and if you take a turn of the rope about your own body you can pay it out gradually. I don’t see any difficulty; the load will be only a few of your pounds.”
„Not that way, perhaps, but there’s another point. Your rope is very thin indeed, and the handling clamps of my armor are somewhat clumsy when it comes to managing small objects. What if the cord slips out of my grip?” That silenced Barlennan for a moment.
„What is the smallest object you could handle with reasonable security?”
„Oh — one of your masts, I should say.”
„There is no trouble, then. We will wind the rope about a mast, and you can use that as a windlass. You can toss mast and rope over afterward; if the stick is broken the loss will not be too great.”
Lackland shrugged. „It’s your health and property, Barl. I don’t have to say I’ll be careful; I wouldn’t want anything to happen to you, especially through my negligence. I’ll be out shortly.” The Mesklinite, satisfied, leaped back to the ground and began to give the necessary orders to the few remaining sailors. The second last load went down with all of these; and a few moments later the Earthman emerged from his conveyance.
Barlennan was waiting for him. A single raft now lay at the cliff edge, tied in its sling and ready to go. A radio and the bundled remains of the scaffolding lay upon it, and the captain was dragging the mast which had the line wrapped about it toward Lackland. The man’s approach was slow, for the terrible fatigue seemed to grow with every instant; but he finally reached a point about ten feet from the edge, reached over as far as his clumsy garment would permit, and took the mast from the tiny being who had reared up to meet him. Without a word of caution or any other suggestion of doubt in his big friend, Barlennan turned back to the raft, made sure its cargo was lashed securely, pushed it until it was teetering on the edge of the cliff, and climbed aboard.
He turned for a last look at Lackland, and the man could have sworn that he winked. Then, „Hang on, Charles,” came the voice over the radio; and the captain stepped deliberately to the outer edge of the precariously balanced raft. His pincers were securely caught in the lashings, which was all that kept him aboard as the platform teetered once and slipped over the rim.
There was enough slack in the line Lackland was holding to permit a couple of feet of fall; and raft and passenger vanished instantly. A sharp jerk told the man that at least the line was still holding, and an instant later Barlennan’s voice cheerfully conveyed the same information. „Lower awayl” was the concluding phrase; and Lackland obeyed.
It was rather like handling a kite, at least in the form of windlass he was using — simply a cord wound on a stick. It revived childhood memories; but if he lost this kite he would, he knew, be much longer in getting over it. He did not have the best possible grip on the mast, and he slowly pivoted so as to wind the cord about his body before he tried to change holds. Then, satisfied, he paid out slowly.
Barlennan’s voice came at intervals, always with something encouraging; it was as though the midget had an idea of the anxiety in Lackland’s mind. „Halfway now.” „Smooth going.” „You know, I don’t mind looking down even this far, now.” „Almost there — just a little more — that’s it; I’m down. Hold onto the tackle for a little, please; I’ll tell you when the area is clear and it’s all right to throw it down.”
Lackland continued to obey. For a keepsake, he tried to break off a foot or two from the end of the cable, but found it impossible even with armored hands. However, the edge of one of the locking snaps on his armor proved sharp enough to cut the stuff, and he wound the souvenir around his arm before starting to carry out the remaining requests of his ally.
„We have things out from underneath, Charles; you can let go your end of the rope and toss the mast over whenever you want.” The fine cord slithered instantly out of sight, and the ten-inch twig that was one of the Bree’s main booms followed. Seeing things fall free in triple gravity, Lackland found, was even worse than thinking about it. Maybe it would be better at the poles — then you couldn’t see them at all. Not where an object falls some two miles in the first second! But perhaps the abrupt vanishing would be just as hard on the nerves. Lackland shrugged off these thoughts and turned back to the tank.
For the couple of hours the process took he watched the Bretfs reassembly through the vision sets. With just the traces of a wish that he might go along, he saw the cluster of rafts pushed out into the broad stream, and listened to the farewells of Barlennan, Dondragmer, and the crew — he could guess at the meaning of the sounds uttered even by the sailors who spoke no English. Presently the current bore the vessel far enough from the cliff to be seen from the tank’s position. Lackland raised a hand silently in farewell, and watched her as she shrank slowly and finally vanished toward the distant sea.
For long minutes he sat silently; then roused himself to call the Toorey base.
„You may as well come and pick me up. I’ve done all I can on the surface.”
X: HOLLOW BOATS
The river, once away from the vicinity of the great fall, was broad and slow. At first the air trapped by the descending „water” furnished a breeze toward the sea, and Barlennan ordered the sails set to take advantage of it; but this presently died out and left the ship at the mercy of the current. This was going in the right direction, however, and no one complained. The land adventure had been interesting and profitable, for several of the plant products collected could certainly be sold at high prices once they reached home; but no one was sorry to be afloat again. Some looked back at the waterfall as long as it could be seen, and once everyone stared into the west to catch a glimpse of the rocket as the muted thunder of its approach reached them; but in general the feeling was one of anticipation.
The banks on either side began to draw more and more attention as they proceeded. During their overland journey they had become accustomed to the sight of an occasional upright growth of the sort that the Flyer had called a „tree,” usually seeing one every few days. They had been fascinating objects at first, and had, indeed, proved a source of one of the foods they planned to sell at home. Now the trees were becoming more and more numerous, threatening to replace the more familiar sprawling, rope-branded plants entirely, and Barlennan began to wonder if even a colony planted here might not be able to support itself by trade in what the Flyer had called fir cones.
For a long time, fully fifty miles, no intelligent Me was sighted, though animals in fair numbers were seen along the banks. The river itself teemed with fish, though none appeared large enough to constitute a danger to the Bree. Eventually the river on either side became lined with trees, which extended no one could tell how far inland; and Barlennan, spurred by curiosity, ordered the ship steered closer to shore to see what a forest — he had no such word for it, of course — looked like.
It was fairly bright even in the depths of the wood, since the trees did not spread out at the top nearly as much as is common on Earth, but it was strange enough. Drifting along almost in the shadow of the weird plants, many of the crew felt a resurgence of their old terror of having solid objects overhead; and there was a general feeling of relief when the captain silently gestured the helmsman to steer away from the bank once more.
If anyone lived there they were welcome to it. Dondragmer expressed this opinion aloud, and was answered by a general mutter of approval. Unfortunately, his words were either not heard or not understood by listeners on the bank. Perhaps they were not actually afraid that the Bree’s crew meant to take their forest away JrOm them, but they decided to take no chances; and once more the visitors from high-weight suffered an experience with projectile weapons.
The armory this time consisted entirely of spears. Six of them flew silently from the top of the bank and stuck quivering in the Bree’s deck; two more glanced from the protective shells of sailors and clattered about on the rafts before coming to rest. The sailors who had been hit leaped convulsively from pure reflex, and both landed yards away in the river. They swam back and clambered aboard without assistance, for all eyes were directed toward the source of the mysterious attack. Without orders the helmsman angled more sharply toward the center of the river.
„I wonder who sent those — and if they used a machine like the Flyer’s. There wasn’t the same noise.” Barlennan spoke half aloud, not caring whether he were answered. Terblannen wrenched one of the spears out of the deck and examined its hardwood point; then, experimentally, he threw it back at the receding shore. Since throwing was a completely new art to him, except for experiments such as he had made in getting objects to the top of the tank in the stone-rollers’ city, he threw it as a child throws a stick, and it went spinning end over end back to the woods. Barlennan’s question was partly answered; short as his crewman’s arms were, the weapon reached the bank easily. The invisible attackers at least didn’t need anything like Lackland’s gun, if they were anything like ordinary people physically. There seemed no way to tell what the present attackers were, and the captain had no intention of finding out by direct examination. The Bree kept on downstream, while an account of the affair went winging up to Lackland on distant Toorey.
For fully a hundred miles the forest continued while the river widened gradually. The Bree kept out in midstream for a time after her single encounter with the forest dwellers, but even that did not keep her completely out of trouble. Only a few days after the arrival of the spears, a small clearing was sighted on the left bank. His viewpoint only a few inches off the surface prevented Barlennan from seeing as well as he would have liked, but there were certainly objects in that clearing worthy of examination. After some hesitation he ordered the ship closer to that bank. The objects looked a little like trees, but were shorter and thicker. Had he been higher he would have seen small openings in them just above ground level which,might have been informative; Lackland, watching through one of the vision sets, compared the things at once to pictures he had seen of the huts of African natives, but he said nothing yet. Actually he was more interested in a number of other items lying partly in and partly out of the river in front of what he already assumed to be a village. They might have been logs or crocodiles, for they were not too clearly visible at this distance, but he rather suspected they were canoes. It would be interesting to see how Barlennan reacted to a boat so radically different from his own.
It was quite a while, however, before anyone on the Bree realized that the „logs” were canoes or the other mysterious objects dwellings. For a,time, in fact, Lackland feared that they would drift on downstream without ever finding out; their recent experience had made Barlennan very cautious indeed. However, there were others besides Lackland who did not want the ship to drift by without stopping, and as she approached the point on her course opposite the village a red and black flood of bodies poured over the bank and proved that the Earthman’s conjecture had been correct. The loglike objects were pushed into the stream, each carrying fully a dozen creatures who apparently belonged to the identical species as the Bree’s crew. They were certainly alike in shape, size, and coloring; and as they approached the ship they uttered earsplitting hoots precisely like those Lackland had heard on occasion from his small friends.
The canoes were apparently dugouts, hollowed out sufficiently so that only the head end of each crew member could be seen; from their distribution, Lackland suspected that they lay herring-
