Colin Kapp
Colin Kapp, a young British scientist and fast becoming one of our most popular s-f writers, presents a story which should delight all those who demand more science in their fiction. In short, how to build a boat without wood, metal or tools—providing that you live on a planet where the sea water is suitable for ion-exchange.
* * * *
Even the transcendental scarlet did not obtrude, so exquisitely did the colours harmonize with and complement each other, the subtleties of tone quieting the gaudiness with soft and mellowing hues to produce the nearest thing to visual perfection that Blick had ever experienced. Certainly he had never before seen the rock faces so beautifully adorned.
This was partly the effect of the season, and partly the effect of a new current stirring through the rocks, whose movement seemed to excite an increase in the speed of the life-cycle of the magnificent flora, initiating a kind of avid thirsting to contribute the finest consummative blossoms to the orgy of summer on Hebron V. And for uncounted hectares, infinite and beautiful, the garden of sweet waters continued to the far horizon.
The apparent solidity of the panorama was almost entirely illusory. The rocks of highly foamed siliceous slag had a density of only point seven six against a density of one point three for the mineral broth on which they floated. Apart from the random and still ill-understood currents, the normal drift was slow, caused by planetary rotation and the drag of the solitary satellite, and was of the order of a mere kilometre per hour in this latitude. However solid and static the scene might appear at any one instant, the continuing migration of any salient points which might occur on the landscape soon dispelled any illusions of permanency. Only the floating process stations and the flexible railway which ran on a line of floats for nearly two hundred kilometres to the Base on Lamedah, the planet’s only significant land-mass, were chain-anchored to the deep bedrock of the core.
On this day, however, the usual northerly movement of surface water was being reinforced by a more rapid current, and the scenic drift was probably approaching three kilometres an hour, an almost unknown occurrence. The effect was mesmeric, since, lacking a stable visual reference point, the station itself appeared to be in motion, ploughing through the gardens of infinitely coloured delight as a ship passes through the sea, the rocks turning and dividing about the utilitarian rafts and reforming to an apparently solid terrain on having passed the obstacle. The delicious and delicately gaudy flora which abounded on the oceanic floating garden was equally adaptable and divisible, being mainly soft and pithy, with trailers having no great tensile strength. Only a few of the trailing roots and membranes fouled the rafts in passing, and even these were eventually swept aside by the attrition of the rocky drift.
Blick was suitably impressed. The multiple passions which had driven him ultimately to this far and obscure corner of the universe still left him with a restless dissatisfaction, which the motion of the drift did something to relieve. He smiled wryly at some introspective pattern of reflection. Curiously, a passion for anonymity and loneliness were not the factors which had led him to become anonymous and alone in this most lonely and anonymous of places. This was an irony of life he could never explain, even to himself.
The fact that he was at this outpost at all was, he knew, entirely his own doing. He had pioneered the technique of ion-exchange concentrate “mining” on Hebron V, and could by now, had he chosen, have occupied a safe and high administrative position in the company. But by a combination of obstinacy, assumed eccentricity and a carefully pre-calculated lack of responsibility, he had excused and manoeuvred himself out of the desk work and the salary and returned to this outpost laboratory and his thoughts. Metaphorically, the Company had shrugged its shoulders and calculated that he was the only loser, and since Blick always returned good value for money spent, he was left to have his way.
Glancing at the multiple hands of his wrist chronometer he turned, for perhaps the hundredth time, to scan the railway line which crossed the ocean on the incredibly fragile-seeming chain of floats and supporting girders. On Hebron V the railway meant so much more than transport; it meant power, communication and life itself. Without the usually punctual daily train not only was his work hampered to the point of uselessness, but he and the occupants of the other stations were left in an intolerably dangerous situation. Currently, the train was fourteen hours overdue, and the multiplex communication line had ceased to function.
He smiled again his wry, habitual smile and turned his attention back to the rafts of the station chained in loose association, from the broad backs of which rose his precious tanks and pumps and the tall resin columns of the ion-exchange installation. Methodically, almost absent-mindedly, he checked the gauges and adjusted the flow rates one by one. The pump on plant eighty-seven was labouring badly, so he made a note to clear the filters, and closed the unit down. This done, he returned to the laboratory and began to run analyses on the various concentrates entering the tanks.
The analysis results were moderately good, with platinum-group metals from the deep pickup particularly high, but the yield from the resin beds selective to the heavier trans-uranic elements was disappointing, and scarcely justified his request to the Company for the recent “drift” of the station two kilometres south of its original position. The “top-stream” water was again the frequent mixed mineral stew, and he noted to limit his intake of this solely for the production of the process water he needed to keep the other columns in operation. Only from the “midi” stream was the output high with his staple product—copper. The midi pumps were bringing up a good quality liquor, mainly sulphate radical and organo-complex, and by using sulphuric acid to regenerate the ion-exchange resins he was producing almost completely pure copper sulphate for transfer to the storage tanks. Out here on the Rim, where copper had nine hundred times the value of gold on Terra, this was a useful achievement, so he plotted his influent depths and went out again to sound the height of the midi current.
It was then, as he was crossing the broad raft decking, that he perceived the next hint of trouble. So used were his ears to the whine and throb of his pumps that he could almost tell their individual performances by their contributions to the total melange of sound. Had his ears not been so critical he could have missed entirely the almost imperceptible break in their rhythm. In fact, so short was the period before recovery that the circuit-breakers did not have time to react before the current was restored and held them firm.
Scowling, he forgot his intended mission and turned back to the power room, where the current from the cable, which picked up from the railway line, was divided and the power suitably transformed to provide the complex needs of the station. Nothing appeared amiss; the meters exhibited no more than the usual slight hunting, and all the breakers and isolators were cool and firm. This led him to assume that the fault had lain with the supply and not with his own installation, and he raised one eyebrow at the implication.
The electricity supply was fed into the conductors, which also served as the railway lines and the multiplex communication feeder, at Station Sixteen, about a hundred and fifty kilometres north down the precarious chain of floats which was their only link with Lamedah. Since the supply itself was an MHD-oscillating atomic-plasma reactor, and therefore not itself likely to be subject to random variations in output, the fault probably lay either with the associated equipment at Station Sixteen or, more possibly and more potentially disastrous, with the railway line itself.
Blick had never had any illusions about the seriousness of a major catastrophe affecting the functioning of the line. Economics alone had dictated that three parallel bars of steel-clad gold should span the two hundred kilometres from the Base on Lamedah to Station Sixty, carrying power, transportation and communication simultaneously along the chain of PTCFE floats which was the sole and dubious umbilical cord feeding the sixty stations of the line. Max Colindale, the general manager of Transgalactic Mining and Minerals, had a whole file of Blick’s comments on the arrangement, and the heading on the file, had he seen it, would have caused Blick’s immediate resignation.
* * * *
With the ‘plex gone, the only remaining communication device was a sound-powered circuit to Station Sixty, which had originally been installed by the construction team for the purpose of comparing drift velocities. Station Sixty, at the end of the chain, some five and a half kilometres distant, was now used only as an ecological field laboratory under the control of Martha Sorenson, the planetary biologist. For purely personal and emotional reasons Blick’s hands were trembling very slightly as he dragged the instrument from the rear of the desk. It had been a long time since he had used it last. After a brief moment of hesitation he cranked the instrument and then sat back with the handset, and was relieved to hear the click signifying contact established.
“Martha?”
“Who else did you expect?” Five words only, but the inflections of the voice carried even over the restricted frequency range of the instrument. Association did the rest.
“Blick,” said Blick unnecessarily, knowing as he said it that the circuit did not and could not possibly communicate with any other two people.
Understanding, she allowed him the seconds necessary to recover from his slight confusion, so he continued: “Look, there’s something wrong with the line between here and Base. The train is seventeen hours overdue and I can’t raise Base or anybody on the ‘plex system.”
“I know,” said Martha. “I tried to send in my reports on the telefax, but the system’s completely dead. The power’s erratic, too. What do you think’s gone wrong, Blick?”
“The power’s fed into the line at Station Sixteen, but the ‘plex continues through to Base. That suggests trouble at or near Sixteen on the Base side. If I remember rightly there’s a submarine valley across there somewhere.”
“Yes, the Anapolis deeps. I did a bio-survey in that area last year. There’s a lot of high-velocity current layers in that area. Perhaps one of them surfaced.”
“Perhaps. That could be nasty if the line’s been broken completely. There’s no construction team left onworld, and Base-maintenance aren’t equipped to handle anything that big.”
“You think this might be big?” she asked.
“I’m afraid it might. A swamped float should only take a few hours to replace, but seventeen hours needs some explaining. If it is a big break it could take weeks to repair, and if it needs supplies or help from offworld it could take a month before they can get to us out here. How’re you fixed for food?”
“About three days, if I eat the tins I’ve been avoiding.”
“Roughly the same here. Look, if the situation doesn’t change before nightfall I suggest we place ourselves on an emergency footing. The sooner we do that the longer we will be able to last out if we have to.”
“That makes sense,” said Martha, “but surely they could reach us somehow before then? They’ve plenty of boats at base.”
“Only lightweight stuff, and no use for working against the rock-drift at this time of year. The best they have available is capable of not much above five kilometres per hour against the drift, and we’re two hundred kilometres south of Base. In their region, the prevailing current is about seven kilometres per hour just now and moving north-north-west, so they couldn’t reach us if they tried. And if a high-velocity streamer has broken surface across the Anapolis deeps we must assume it’s westerly bound, and that makes the situation completely hopeless.”
“You’re right, of course,” said Martha. “I’d never stopped to think just how precarious our situation was out here.”
“I did,” said Blick. “I had a row with Max Colindale over it, and nearly got my contract cancelled for my pains. It seems I was up against something called statistical probability, which proved to his satisfaction that my chances of dying of starvation out here were far slighter than my chances of dying anywhere else in the galaxy from all forms of fatality combined. Therefore, what did I have to complain about? He was doing me a favour, no less.”
Martha began laughing. “Poor old Blick! I can just imagine your reaction when he told you that. I never could really understand why you came out here in the first place.”
“Can’t you, Martha ?” Blick’s voice was quickly sad.
She stopped laughing suddenly. “Yes. I do know, Blick. But it was a stupid thing to do. We both know there can never be anything more between us—not while you have a wife and family who love you as dearly as yours do. I’ve been too much hurt by the same sort of situation myself, remember? You can’t ask me to be instrumental in bringing that sort of hurt to you or them. You’re too damn nice, the whole bunch of you.”
“That’s my trouble in life,” said Blick, “being too damn nice and getting involved with people who are too damn nice. It’s a positive fault. It’s the uncharitable, the inconsiderate and the conscienceless figurative bastards of this life who get all the breaks.”
“I know what you mean,” said Martha seriously. “You don’t know how many times I’ve had that argument with myself. There’ve been times when just one more hurt dealt out by life could have made me quash my scruples and come to you, regardless of the consequences.”
“Thank you for that crumb, anyway,” said Blick. “I’ll call you again before nightfall unless anything happens before.”
He broke the connection and leaned back, thankful for the first time that the sound-powered phone did not have the video circuits provided by the ‘plex. He did not want anyone, especially Martha, to see him in his present mood.
* * * *
The power held out until mid-afternoon. The impending failure was heralded by two staccato interruptions, which dropped out all of the small automatic circuit-breakers on Blick’s installations before picking up again. Blick did not bother to restart the stalled equipment, but merely went round and closed the valves isolating the columns from the water, regenerant and concentrate tanks. There was no point in producing further concentrates to meet a delivery schedule for which no transport was likely to be available.
The ‘plex system remained dead. Blick briefly considered breaking the equipment open and recovering components sufficient to build a small morse transmitter. Having considered thus far he realized that it was not a transmitter he needed but a receiver. Base would already be acutely aware of the position of the stations along the chain, and it was information from Base that was needed, not the reverse. Certainly, he had neither the knowledge nor the facilities to build a receiver capable of rendering intelligible the complex compressed-information transmissions of the Base deep-space transmitter, even if ionospheric scatter were to deflect sufficient of it to make the transmission available in this region.
The final failure of the power rendered even these speculations sterile. This time there was no instantaneous break in the current, but a slow tail-off both in potential and frequency which Blick recognized as the result of the damping of the MHD reactor until the oscillations ceased and the plasma was extinguished. This particular mode of shutdown suggested an emergency measure to ensure the safety of the reactor rather than a calculated engineering shutdown.
Looking northward down the chain he could see nothing of interest save for the perspective convergence of the railway lines, which being curved by a more than usually western component in the drift, cheated him of his habitual thoughts of the spacing of the rails approaching the infinitely small but never quite attaining it. Shorn of the noise of the pumps the station was enfolded by a vast silence, and the blank, orange-tinted sky seemed to move oppressively lower. He became aware for the first time of the slight bump and drag of the rocky foam along the edges of the rafts and the skitter of small fauna on the rocks hurriedly avoiding the upset which was caused to their own small and insubstantial worlds.
Returning to the cabin, he was about to crank-up the sound-powered phone to Station Sixty when the instrument rang under his fingers, giving him a shock which he experienced as more physical than psychological.
“What are we going to do, Blick?”
“Currently, there’s not much we can do except wait. Now the power’s gone I think we can safely assume there’s a major break in the line and that it’s going to take a long time to repair. Perhaps the Base engineers can handle it, but I doubt if they can even get across without a cushion-craft of sorts, and that’ll have to come from outworld somewhere. I rather fancy it’ll mean a heavy engineering crew being brought in from Delta Five.”
“But that may take a month!” Martha tried to adjust to the situation. Blick did nothing to soften the edges of the blow.
“Yes,” he said. “Just that. Perhaps they can get emergency supplies through to us, perhaps not. It’ll depend on whether they can cross whatever gap there is, whether they have a locomotive on this side of the break and whether they themselves can restart the generator for power to drive it here. Given so many unknowns and a complete lack of information our only course is to immediately prepare for the worst.”
“Then what do you suggest?” asked Martha.
“First,” said Blick, “that we move you down here and pool such foodstuffs as we have available. We’ll work out some sort of rationing system which will give us a chance of surviving for a maximum period.”
“Whoa!” said Martha, laughing. “Whose welfare are we interested in? I don’t really see how mine is going to be improved by moving into your cabin, and I can diet here as well as anywhere. Apart from the social prospects, give me one good reason why I should be any better off at your station than at mine ?”
“In a word,” said Blick, “water. Your supply is limited to your tank, and that was due to be refilled by the train that didn’t arrive. I’d guess that only gives you a maximum of two day’s supply in hand unless you give up such luxuries as washing, in which case you can last out for about a week. Here I can use my resin columns to produce as much pure water from the sea as we’re ever likely to require. Stay there if you like, but remember where to come if you get thirsty.”
“I might even do that if you can twist your crazy columns into producing gin, but if you think I’m going to walk five kilometres just for a drink of water, you don’t know Martha Sorenson.”
“How much water have you got, Martha?”
She was silent for a moment. “None, and you damn well know it, Blick.”
“Uh! I’ll come and give you a hand with your supplies. Shall I come tonight or in the morning?”
“Best make it the morning, Blick. I’ve something I must sort out before I leave.”
“Such as?”
“Me,” said Martha, putting down the phone.
* * * *
The only way to reach Station Sixty was to walk the distance over the awkward railway decking. When he arrived, Martha had already packed and was awaiting him. Sensibly, she had limited the load to the very minimum of personal effects plus all the food which was available, though of the latter there was appallingly little. Their reunion was sincere if undemonstrative, and inhibited by a reserve which neither of them would have cared to explain.
Although they had spoken briefly over the ‘plex system they had not seen each other for eight months, and Blick felt a slight stab of pain on noticing that time had touched the first traces of tiredness and hardness to a face he could remember as nothing but youthful and vital. He realized these things only by comparison with memory, and when he looked again he could find nothing but a slightly enhanced maturity, and the intensity which was the essential Martha was undimmed. Nevertheless, something inside him shed a small, bitter tear of regret.
The railway decking had not been designed for pedestrian traffic, being mainly of open-span alloy girder, difficult and dangerous to traverse on foot, and necessarily Blick had to shoulder most of the load. Martha experienced difficulty with even one small case over the five and a half kilometre stretch, and finally he took even this from her. Both were aching and exhausted when the ordeal was over.
At the cabin of Station Fifty-Nine she rested for a time while Blick began to prepare a light meal, for they had neither of them breakfasted. Presently Martha got up and began to prowl around the cabin, examining the personal touches and curios which Blick had added to the structure. Blick was an individualist, moody and uncertain of even himself, and his untidy, enigmatic intelligence and unorthodoxy was everywhere portrayed in the bric-à-brac and sentimental and scientific miscellanea, which he had allowed to spread about his living quarters. Finally, on the desk, she found the frame with the photographs of his wife and children. He saw her looking at it, and took it from her and laid it face down, deliberately. She put it back firmly into its place, and faced him.
“You know, Blick, that’s the first time I’ve ever seen you even think disloyally towards your wife.”
He wiped an unruly lock of hair back from his forehead. “It’s a curious thing, Martha, but in all the time I’ve loved you I’ve never even felt disloyal. What I feel for you and what I feel for her are just not the same kind of emotions at all. What’s the expression? ‘When love has changed to kindliness’? That’s all there ever was between her and me—oceans of kindliness. I even thought that was what love was, until I met you.”
“And you still love me that much?” The question was one of interested compassion.
Blick nodded. “I may be a bloody fool, but at least I’m a consistent bloody fool.”
“You shouldn’t go on tormenting yourself, Blick. Time and again I’ve told you to forget me.”
“Forget?” He smiled wearily. “And just what the hell do you suppose I’ve been trying to do ? My God, if only I could forget you that easily!”
She scowled and turned to the window. “No, and in a way I’m glad. I can’t forget you either, Blick. It just goes to show that the deserving don’t always get what they think they deserve.”
* * * *
On the decking of the raft she looked about in bewilderment at the tanks and the tall columns and the maze of valves and pipework which constituted the installation.
“What do you do here, anyway, Blick?”
“We pump up selected metal-bearing liquor streams from the sea, and using ion-exchange techniques we partially separate and then concentrate the metal salt solutions for subsequent metal extraction and refining at Lamedah.”
“Ah, that accounts for the tank wagons on the railway. What precisely is ion-exchange, anyway?”
“Nothing new,” said Blick. “It’s been used in regenerable water-softeners for donkey’s years. Basically, the columns are full of minute beads of special resins. These resins are insoluble, but contain free anions or cations, according to type, and these free ions are capable of being exchanged for other ions from a solution with which they are in contact. The process is reversible, so that by suitable chemical treatment the first ions may be replaced in the resin and the ions which the resin has taken up are displaced and can be collected in the form of a salt concentrate.”
“Whoa!” said Martha. “You’ve got beyond me there. Translation, please.”
“I’ll give you a simple example,” said Blick, “which will also show why we use the system. This is the copper region of Hebron V, and some of the current streams carry a fairly pure but dilute solution of copper salts in water. Factually, the copper concentration in these streams is so low that to attempt to extract the copper from the stream by the usual methods of cementation or electrolysis would be a costly and inefficient business. But if I pass the dilute liquor through a cation resin column, the copper ions will remain in the resin bed while the radical with which it was combined will pass on out of the column, together with whatever ions the copper has itself displaced—in this case, hydrogen.”
“I see, so that you finish with a column of resin containing all the copper ions?”
“Essentially, yes. If I then add fairly strong sulphuric acid to the column, the copper is itself displaced, combines with the sulphate radical, and comes out of the column as a concentrated solution of copper sulphate, in which form it is supremely suitable for electro-refining. The act of passing acid through the column returns the resin to its original form, and the whole cycle is repeated. In the course of electro-refining at Lamedah, even the sulphuric acid is recovered and returned here for re-use, so that material wastage is little. Virtually, we get our copper for little more than the cost of the electricity we use for pumping, transportation and refining.”
“No wonder Max Colindale can afford such big cigars! Does the process work for any metal?”
“Most. Different resins are broadly selective to certain groups of ions, and we’re learning how to tailor them for greater selectivity. By careful choice of resin we can isolate and concentrate one metal preferentially to the others, although some mixing does take place, especially when working a contaminated stream.”
“And you can recover the concentrates merely by regenerating the column?”
“Mostly. Some, like the one which is receptive almost exclusively to gold, can’t be regenerated, so you recover the gold by burning off the resin. The same applies to the platinum-group specific resins and the newly developed one for the transuranic elements. But generally, regeneration suffices, and you’ve even some choice of regenerant to produce chloride, sulphate or whatever happens to be the most convenient salt form.”
“It seems incredible,” said Martha, “that just a few tubes and pumps can do all that.”
“That’s only the start,” said Blick. “We’re working now on using selective ion-exchange membranes coupled with electro-osmosis and electrochromatographic techniques to provide a complete separation of any elements present in a solution. The process is analogous to the one we suspect occurs deep in the ocean belts, the natural mechanism which produces the metal streams from the mineral mixture of the ocean. If we bring it off, we’ll be able to design one plant which can take the mixed mineral liquor and split it down completely into its separate pure salts. No more hunting for reasonable concentration metal streams— just sit back and keep pumping.”
“You love this work, don’t you, Blick?” said Martha, caught by his enthusiasm.
Blick shrugged. “It’s an outlet,” he said. “Something on which to sublimate your energies when you can’t get what you want. And you do know what I want.”
She frowned and turned back a little.
“You’re not being very fair to me, Blick.”
“I know,” said Blick. “Sometimes I even surprise myself. I wasn’t built to handle emotions as big as this. I never quite know the correct way to respond.”
“You’re very sweet,” she said. “Especially when you’re looking so lost. If I ever do change my mind I’ll be sure to let you know.”
“You know I’ve no power at all to resist you ?”
“That’s why I’m trying to be strong for both of us. You can’t jeopardize your family’s whole future, Blick, for a few hours pleasure. You’d never cease hating yourself and me. It’s far too great a risk for so small a return, however much desired.”
“Don’t get me wrong,” said Blick. “Except when I’m doing a tour of duty here, I am starved for neither love, affection nor sex. I lead a normal, happy, married life, and even if I didn’t there’d be a lot more gratifying ways of spending a leave than pining after you. But my private and permanent hunger is more specific: I need you, and you alone, and there’s nothing and nobody else can satisfy that craving. You do more to me with a word or a smile than can anyone else by any human act. Thirsting for you isn’t a whim, it’s a primary fact of life.”
Taking out a packet of cigarettes, she took one for herself and tossed one to him. Blick produced a match. She steadied his hand with hers as he gave her a light, holding it just a little tighter and just a little longer than necessary. He held on to the match ruefully until the flame was licking at his fingers, pretending not to notice the hurt until at last he was forced to let the match drop.
“Burned my damn fingers!” he complained lightly. The joke was an old and private one, but still worth a wry smile. She stepped back and tossed her head amusedly.
“What would you expect if you persist in playing with fire?”
He looked at her with an expression halfway between passion and misery. “Fire,” he said. “You don’t know just how apt that word is. Martha, just for once can’t we ... ?”
“No, Blick. Not even once. If a real affair between us ever got started we’d both get in so deep we’d neither of us be able to pull out again. You’re already too far involved emotionally to have responsible regard for the consequences, and once I’d got you I’d never let you go again. I couldn’t. In love I need security—for want of a better phrase—a sense of permanency. I need to give as well as take, and Blick, darling, I’ve so terribly much to give!”
He looked at her wildly for a second or two.
“Then give!” he said. “Please, darling ... !”
“No, Blick. It wouldn’t be fair to her or them. One day perhaps I’ll get the better of my conscience, but until then...”
“But where’s the harm? We’re alone and likely to remain so for some time. Nobody’s ever to know.”
“We’d know,” said Martha. “You and I. Isn’t that enough?”
“Damn!” said Blick. “In all my life I’ve never heard of anything quite so bloody—mature!”
* * * *
Then came the days of waiting; the seemingly endless scanning of the line, trying the ‘plex, hoping for the impossible sound of engines of skimmer or cushion-craft or boat. Despite their rationing, the food was completely gone on the tenth from the day the train had been due, and the last miserable crumbs were consumed at breakfast.
The next few days were agony until the pangs of hunger subsided into the emptiness of continued starvation. For Martha the ordeal was hard, since she had little enough reserves to meet a continuing lack of food. For Blick it was a major hell, for, although he was in better shape to meet the deprivation, his mental anguish at seeing Martha suffering carved deeply into his emotional make-up and woke him in the night with sad, gaunt fears.
And no help came.
For nine more days they were completely without food —nine days so eternally alike in the wretchedness of watching and waiting and hungering that it was difficult to separate them one from the other even in retrospect. Then Blick broke out of his semi-introspective study with a remarkable attitude of purpose.
“It’s no good, Martha. We’ve got to get away from here somehow. I’ve no doubt they’re doing their best at Base, but they’re certainly now waiting on equipment from Delta Five and seven days time is the minimum time in which it can arrive. You can then add several more days to that before they can get through to us. We aren’t going to be in very good shape by that time, especially you. It’s a risk I daren’t take.”
“How about walking down the line as far as we can ?”
“Walking’s not possible on some of the sections, and anyway, it can’t solve a thing unless we can cross the break. I don’t fancy struggling a hundred and fifty kilometres in our present condition just to have that point underscored. And here we do have shelter, water and a few facilities we won’t find in many places down the line.”
“So what’s the use of talking about getting away?” Lack of sustenance was a condition now bringing her consistently to the verge of anger. She regretted her tone almost immediately, knowing Blick’s resourcefulness and his tendency never to engage in idle discussion. But Blick was unmoved.
“We could do it in a boat,” he said. “The drift is correcting back to North, so the current across Anapolis is probably submerging again, but slowly. If the trend continues, the drift will be almost straight and continuous from here to base waters in a few days’ time.”
“That won’t do us much good without a boat. Are you sure we can’t free one of the rafts?”
“Not a hope. I’ve spent days trying just that. They’re on welded chain and chain-anchored right down to the bedrock. Even if I had the tools, I still couldn’t get one free because the lugs are below the water-line. Nobody but a well-equipped diver could hope to release one. No, the answer is a boat.”
“So where do you propose to get a boat, Blick?” Despite herself, she felt the intolerance returning.
“We make one,” said Blick. “I’m not very sure how at the moment, but there just has to be a way, and if there is, I’ll find it. I tried to cut open a storage tank, but with the tools available, it’s completely hopeless. Nothing that’s loose or unscrews is the slightest use, and the only things promising are welded down. So what I need is a way of constructing a boat without tools and without any raw materials. And this I have to achieve in a few days or watch you starve to death.”
She looked at him appealingly. “Don’t torture yourself, Blick. You’ve done everything humanly possible. Succeed or not, you’re still the most wonderful person I’ve ever known.”
“And while we’re still in the mood for compliments, did I ever tell you I think you’re the most marvellous creature in the universe?”
“Often.”
“That’s what I thought,” said Blick sadly. “Hell, that I should ever be able to forget you!”
For a long moment their eyes met, then he went out of the door stroking his chin thoughtfully. A few moments later, he was back, excited at a new idea.
“Martha, did you have any wax up at Station Sixty ?”
“Wax ? Yes, there’s about a hundred kilos up there as it happens. I spent the spring making mock nests to encourage mating in some of the local fauna.”
“A hundred kilos should do it easily. I’m going to get it down here, I’ll be back in about five hours.”
“Carrying a hundred kilos of wax?”
“It’ll float,” said Blick. “I’ll bale it up and drop it over the edge on a line and tow it.”
“Yes—you would! What are you up to, Blick? This isn’t the mating season, even for the locals.”
“Perhaps not,” said Blick. “I’d not given their personal troubles a thought, but I’ve just realized I do have almost all the raw materials I need to build a boat.”
“You have?”
“Yes,” said Blick. “Copper sulphate solution—thousands of gallons of it.”
“I may be a bit dense,” said Martha, “but I don’t see how you can build a boat. “
“Wax,” said Blick. “That’s the thing I need. Look, I’ve got to hurry if I’m to get it down here before nightfall.”
“If you think you can build a boat out of wax you’re crazy.”
“Wouldn’t dream of trying it,” said Blick. “I’ll explain it all later.” He turned to go.
“Blick!”
“Yes?”
“Take care of yourself, darling. We couldn’t bear to lose you.”
* * * *
She regarded the wax critically. “I still don’t see what you’re going to do with it.”
“I’m going to mould the hollow form of a boat, a mould in which the boat is to be made.”
She shrugged. “I suppose you know what you’re doing.”
“I’m doing the only thing I see possible, Martha. Now roll up your sleeves and lend me a hand. This boat is going to take days to make and we don’t have many days in which to make it.”
The morning was a dull, orange overcast, and the primary sun was visible only as a dull, red-tinged glow against the featureless pattern of sky. There was no great warmth n the day. She picked up a block of wax and examined it. It was unyielding and brittle.
“You can’t work this stuff, Blick. Not without heating it.”
“Wouldn’t dream of trying to,” said Blick, infuriatingly. He was busy marking measurements on the decking. “Get yourself a few plastic buckets and put a block of wax in each, and then stand them in one of the low tanks along the front there. A little water and some concentrated sulphuric acid mixed in the tank will give us all the heat we need.”
“You think of everything, don’t you? Are you always so damn clever?”
“Except at love,” said Blick.
She went away quietly, in search of buckets.
By mid-day enough of the wax was softened for the work to begin. Martha learned to operate the appropriate water and acid valves on the tank and kept the flow of preheated wax blocks moving. Blick, with an assortment of unorthodox tools, deftly worked the blocks together and slowly built up the mould shape, burnishing the inside surface by rubbing, in order to make a smooth and waterproof seal. Occasionally, he passed a thin wire from inside to outside and sealed it into place. She watched his quick, capable hands with fascination as they rapidly acquired new skills in this unfamiliar craft, and knew then just how much meaning and expression Blick was capable of transmitting by a single grasp of the hand. The idea made her own hands tremble, even more than the reaction to hunger.
By nightfall the job was done. The mould, that for a reasonable-sized, if unorthodox, craft for two people, was complete. Blick solidly cursed the loss of light which robbed him of the opportunity of proceeding to the next stage of his plan, but with no power to supply artificial lighting, the cessation of outside work was unavoidable. He then fashioned two crude candles from wax and retired to the chemical laboratory, where he spent several hours carefully weighing and mixing chemicals. If he slept at all, he must have slept briefly at his bench, for Martha had the cabin to herself, and, when she awoke at first light, Blick was already at work out on the rafts.
He had stripped a lot of wiring out of the cable channels and was engaged in extensive alterations to the control circuitry, looping and re-routing conductors in a fashion which proclaimed the immediate and extremely temporary nature of the modifications. She went and stood by him for a while, but realizing she could not hope to be useful in a scheme in which even Blick was extemporizing, she went back to the cabin and drew him a glass of water and took it to him.
Blick acknowledged her action with a brief nod, and carried on without stopping, working his way down the cable channels past each column in turn, cutting and joining wires at a speed which showed his complete familiarity with even minor details of the layout of the installation. He finished, ultimately, with a pair of heavy wires long enough to reach the boat mould, one of which wires he joined to the outer ends of the fine wires embedded in the mould of the hull.
“Phase two completed,” he said.
“Now tell me what you’re going to do ?” she asked.
“Electroforming,” said Blick. “Heavy electroplating, if you like. We’re going to chemically silver the inside of this wax boat-form to make it electrically conductive, then fill it with slightly acid copper sulphate solution and electroplate a sufficiently thick layer of copper out of the solution to make a boat.”
She grasped his arm. “Can you really do that, Blick?”
He shrugged. “With luck. Our difficulty is in trying to make something of this size and under such extremely crude conditions. And we’ve only got one chance!”
She was still worried. “But, Blick, you need electric current for electroplating. We don’t have any current. The power’s all off.”
Blick looked at her sagely. From behind his fond eyes a touch of his patient genius looked also. “I must confess that had me worried too. We’ve no incoming power and no batteries, and on the face of it, the whole project was stillborn. Had I been alone, I think I might have left it right there, and just laid right down to die. But, oh God—not you! Here’s an indication of how you inspire me, Martha—I cracked the problem, and in a way you won’t find in any of the textbooks.”
“Go on,” she said, watching his face intently. The relief on his brow now that he had a definite plan of action was a wonderful thing to see.
“There’s a way of making an ion-exchange column act like a battery—not a very good one, I’ll admit, but there’s plenty of columns to do the job. I’ve modified the circuits to give us the sort of potential and current we need, and we’ve got a good supply of both acid and copper concentrate in the header tanks. By the alternate running of these columns, reversing polarity where necessary, we shall just about have the current we need to do the job. I’ll guarantee this’ll be the first boat ever to be electro-formed by power from ion-exchange columns—and, come to think of it, it’ll probably be the first electro-formed boat, anyway. The whole idea is too damned ridiculous for words ... !” For a short instant his humour became dominant.
“I love to see you smile, Blick,” she said. “You should do it more often.”
“Can’t,” said Blick. “Too many sorrows and frustrations, and they’re all named Martha.”
“Don’t say that, Blick. You make me regret I ever met you.”
“Then don’t! Every man needs one consuming passion in his life to force him to know himself, to drive him to explore the uttermost antipodes of feeling and to lift him a little out of the ordinary. Some choose money, some art; some choose religion, or martyrdom even. I chose you, and I’m damned if I’d swap my passion for any of those lesser substitutes.”
“I suppose it never occurred to you that I’m a very ordinary person really? Not worth all that at all.”
“No,” said Blick, “because for me it isn’t true.” He looked at her, and his eyes were full of adoration. “My God, there’s no phrase to describe the impact you have on me! Words alone can never tell how much I love.”
He turned to go, but on a sudden impulse she called him back.
“Blick! Darling, in case we don’t get out of this there’s something that I have on my conscience and I’d like to say it now.”
“You don’t need to,” said Blick. “I think I already know it.”
“Let me say it, anyway. You see, Blick, you’re so naive and wonderful you shouldn’t be allowed out on your own. You think that love is something made in Heaven, or wherever. It isn’t. When all this started between us it was because I made a deliberate play for you, built up that love in you, teased and withdrew until you were so involved emotionally that you had no option but to follow. I did that to you, Blick, and I did it not for love but because I was curious, because I was hurt and because I needed the type of admiration and depth of affection which your sensitivity seemed able to provide. I was using you as a means of salvaging my self-respect, and to avenge myself for the hurt that life had given me.”
“Go on,” said Blick.
“I never intended to become much involved myself, Blick, because you didn’t have the freedom to give me all the things I lost when my own marriage was shattered. Yet you were that receptive I was sorely tempted to use you even as a means for stealing back from life all that life had stolen from me.”
“But you did become involved?”
“Yes. I either misjudged myself or I underestimated your damned constancy. I became involved myself, and for that reason, I couldn’t do to your marriage what somebody else had done to mine. But I still hurt you. I’d no idea you’d get into it so deeply and for so long. But the bitchy part is this—I’ve never allowed you to forget. I created that love in you, and, ever since, I’ve fed it, always leaving one hint of promise never to be fulfilled. It made me feel ... somebody ... to have that kind of devotion. I needed your love, Blick, and I still do. But can you forgive me for what it’s cost you?”
“It’s not a question of forgiving,” said Blick very gently. “You’ve given me some of the best and most of the blackest hours of my life, but I wouldn’t have missed one of those hours for anything. You see, it’s in me to love that deeply, and only someone as hurt and human and as lost and desirable as you could satisfy that need. And, oh God ... I’ve loved you as nobody ever loved anyone before!”
He walked deliberately away to the chemical laboratory, where the silvering reagents he had prepared during the night stood ready for use. She stood for a long time engaged in silent mental conflict, looking at the boat mould and then at the sweet waters of the floating garden, and finally in the far direction of the Base on Lamedah which was synonymous for her with the influence of the worlds outside. Then she picked up one of Blick’s improvised tools he had used for working the wax and inscribed something on the mould wall on the side where it was not too easily seen.
* * * *
The critical stages were twofold: first, the silvering of the wax to render it conductive; and, secondly, the first deposit of copper on the only molecules-thick layer of silver without disrupting the silver, since any disruption would have meant a fatal flaw in the subsequent deposit and a useless boat. Knowing too well what was at stake, Blick applied three successive layers of silver to the inside of the mould before he was satisfied, carefully recleaning some areas before repeating the operation. Fortunately, the first deposit of copper, from a low-acid solution, took without fault, and the inside of the mould assumed the uniform and beautiful salmon-pink coloration of freshly deposited copper.
Then the work began in earnest. Since Blick was using pieces of lead as anodes and the only source of copper metal was that contained in the copper solution, it was necessary to arrange an influx of new liquor from the header tank. He arranged a constant slow feed through a pipe, and the excess liquid in the mould was allowed to discharge itself over the top edge and drain away through the decking.
To enable the speed of copper plating to be increased without detriment to the quality of the deposited metal, Martha was stationed with a length of plastic pipe as a paddle to keep the solution in motion, while Blick busied himself with his columns, controlling the flow of concentrate and regenerant by manually operating the valves, which necessitated climbing the columns individually. By nightfall, Martha was almost dropping from exhaustion, and Blick made her go and rest. He himself carried on far into the night, relying on memory when sight was of no avail, and in the morning she found him asleep and exhausted on the decking.
The day following was a trial for both of them, for they were now in no condition to expend the energy which the job required.
Martha paddled the mould listlessly, and Blick continued to climb his columns, but more slowly and less surely than before. The thickness of deposit so far achieved was difficult to gauge, but they knew that whatever they achieved by nightfall would have to suffice. They would be in no condition to continue for another day.
And with the coming of dusk, Blick fell from a column. He did not hurt himself severely, but his foot and ankle swelled to a point where he could not fit his shoe, and made further climbing impossible. Martha volunteered to carry on, but he refused to let her take the risk.
Under his direction, she stopped the solution flowing to the mould and syphoned the liquid from it. She then part-filled the mould with water and Blick added concentrated sulphuric acid until the acid liquor was hot enough to melt away the wax of the mould, which dropped obligingly away through the decking. Then, leaving the slight flow of the little remaining water to rinse the acid from inside the boat, they lay down together in the cabin, too exhausted to do more than lightly press hand to hand in the hungry darkness.
* * * *
In the morning, the result of their labours appeared amazing. The boat shone silver and brilliant on the decking, its exterior mirror-like from the burnishing that Blick had given the mould, the silver coating itself protected from tarnish by the miniscule film of wax that still clung to the surface. Inside, curiously, the bare copper had tarnished only slightly to a uniform and perfect gold. Under other circumstances they would have been delighted with such a rare craft, but Blick knew how perilously thin and brittle was the unorthodox hull, and his sense of unease communicated itself to Martha, cruelly sapping her last hopes for survival.
Nevertheless, Blick proceeded with the launching. This he accomplished with the hoists used for positioning the pump pickup tubes, but using the hand-winching mechanism in lieu of the power drive. A crude wire sling supported the vessel as it was inched up and over the rail into the water. Both held their breaths very tightly as the craft settled between floating boulders, and were grateful when it rode between high and undamaged. Blick threw a mattress into the bottom to distribute his weight, then entered cautiously. Miraculously the thin shell of the craft held true, so he beckoned Martha down also, and still the precious hull did not crack or buckle.
Martha held the boat against the pressure of the drift while Blick loaded the equipment he wished to take: two small mixed-bed resin columns from the lab to ensure their supply of drinking water, two cushions, some black plastic sheeting, a few glass beakers, two bottles of chemicals and a stick.
“This is it, Martha!” he told her. “You know just how slight our chances are.”
She nodded but did not speak. Instead, she grasped his hand and pulled him into the boat. She continued holding his hand until it was necessary for him to fend the boat away from the rafts and push it farther out into the rocky drift.
As Blick had predicted, the direction of the drift had now swung back to almost due north, and followed the line of the railway sufficiently closely that in daylight they were able to keep it in view. From the incidence of the stations which they passed, Blick estimated their speed at about two kilometres per hour at the start, although their speed was obviously increasing slightly and their direction would gain a westerly component as they grew nearer to Lamedah. At some point they would be swept back across the route of the railway and become part of the great surge that passed westward into equatorial waters. Blick’s one hope was that they would drift near enough to Lamedah or one of its outposts to be able to attract help. If not, they would die, anyway. There was nothing else they could do.
The most fantastic characteristic of the voyage was the complete sense of stillness and lack of movement. The ever featureless orange sky offered no points of reference, and they themselves had become part of the measureless tide and moved with it in perfectly uniform motion, so that the impression was one of remaining completely static. Only the supports and floats of the railways, sailing wanton and awkward through the brittle panorama, reassured them of their slow movement to potential rescue.
Occasionally, Blick prepared some water through one of his columns and passed it to Martha. On noticing an unusually sweet taste in some, she enquired what was in it. Blick held up the bottle.
“Dextrose,” he said. “It’ll help you some. Unfortunately, we’ve precious little of it.”
“Make sure you share it equally, Blick,” she said. But she noticed that whereas her ration occasionally contained the slight haze of undissolved sugar, his always looked completely clear, despite his reassurances to the contrary.
The night was a long one. Both slept only for a few wretched hours, then sat and stared at the featureless darkness with tired, unsleeping eyes. After a seeming eternity, the dawn dragged itself across the sky and they were able to see the railway again, but were now too far away to see much detail. Blick had calculated their progress at this point as about fifty kilometres, but the only station which they saw which was sufficiently individual to be identifiable appeared to be Number Thirty-seven, which would mean they had covered over seventy kilometres, about a third of the total distance.
Heartened, they endured the day, creating a temporary shelter from the occasional sun with the plastic sheeting and stick. But this was their fourteenth day completely without food, and this, added to their previous ten days of rationing, was taking its drastic toll. Martha, especially, was weakening seriously, while Blick’s foot and ankle were still troubling him. The night was welcome only because it marked a period of time synonymous with a certain progress towards their goal. A divergent westerly stream was beginning to move them back towards the railway, and Blick was under no illusions as to what could happen to the craft should the rocky drift carry it against a float or drag it down the length of a station float in the darkness.
Accordingly, he crouched in the bow with the stick protruding foremost from the boat, poised painfully on his knees, hoping that if they touched some obstacle in the darkness the shock would warn him in time to avert more serious consequences. Shortly, though, he slipped into a state halfway between sleep and delirium, and somehow the stick was lost overboard among the accompanying rocks and was not seen again.
He awoke in panic to find the sun high and the railway nowhere visible on any quarter. He guessed that they must have passed beneath the railway in the night on a westerly stream and were now hopelessly in open water and out of sight of the installation. So unexpected was this blow to his calculations that he sat staring stupidly at the horizon for what seemed hours, not caring to try to break the news to Martha, who still slept fitfully in the stern. For the first time he began to abandon hope, for he knew the absolutely negative chance of their ever being traced if their drift became merged with the great equatorial streams which circled the planet.
A curious false-parallax movement of their rocky environment suddenly warned him that the drift was breaking and diverging as it met a local surface current, and this decided him to use the last weapon in his pitiful armoury. The second chemical bottle contained a fluorescene derivative, a brilliant fluorescent dye which he had used occasionally to follow the path of a particularly valuable metal stream. Still with the chemist’s ingrained reactions, he scooped a little water from the rocky sea in a beaker and added a minute quantity of the chemical. It satisfactorily developed its full colour with the characteristic yellow-green fluorescence for which he had hoped, indicating the suitable alkalinity of the stream. Then, little by little, he emptied the dye over the side, watching it spread around them in a pool of increasing width, gradually coating their rocky, tumbling neighbours as the new current forced a rearrangement, and staining a brilliant trace away to their left as uncertain swirls carried it out and away in the direction they, too, would have to follow shortly.
He became aware that Martha was awake and watching him, but she said nothing, and he had nothing he wished to say, so he passed her some water with the remainder of the dextrose in it, and turned back to his task.
The day grew hot and he lost track of time. He could look at his chronometer, but his mind refused to draw any conclusions from five coloured hands and a set of numerals. In any case, one hour was as much like another as to render even the concept of time untenable. He simply lay and stared at the orange-tinted sky and dreamed featureless dreams to match his mood and his wretchedness.
A spear of light crossed his consciousness, but it took him several seconds to realize that the phenomenon was being perceived by his eyes rather than his imagination. Then his analytical faculties came back into play, and suddenly he was looking at the great sodium-ion trail of a spacecraft making a planetary touchdown, and probably not more than thirty kilometres away.
Hope lashed him out of his reverie. A spacecraft could mean only one thing: a rescue contingent from Delta Five had landed. The only possible place for such a landing was Lamedah, and to judge from the distance and the direction, help was not impossibly far away. Certainly a cushion-craft or skimmer would have been brought crated ready for assembly, and it would take some time, but with a reasonable search pattern they still had a slight chance of locating one small boat amid the rocky, flower-strewn drift. He regretted now having used all the dye too early, for it was becoming dispersed though still at the moment giving a reasonably wide and clear indication of their position. He watched the ion trail slowly fading in the upper atmosphere, and wished bitterly that he had some means of propelling the craft in its direction, or at least halting its motion with the drift, although cold reason assured him the fragile hull could never stand against any relative motion between it and the floating rocks in which it was immersed. He could only sit and hope.
Whether Martha had followed these developments or not was uncertain, for she had drawn in on herself and had become quite still and rarely spoke. Her face was full of a passive resignation born of a strength of character which would not allow her to bend or break. Whether she was suffering for herself or for him, he could not tell, but the agony in her eyes was something more than physical. There was no comfort left that he could offer her, save to hold her hand occasionally and to smile when he could manage.
Several times he thought he heard the drone of engines, but he finally convinced himself that these were a delusion, and with the slowly drawing curtains of another night he lay back with her and forgot even to hope. By morning the dye in the water and on the rocks would be too far disposed to attract attention from any distance, and they would certainly be well into the drift towards the equatorial stream and beyond all thought of rescue.
* * * *
When the shock came in the darkness, he was all but helpless. Dazed, disorientated and incredibly weak, he almost plunged over the side while attempting to ascertain the situation. The boat was grinding dangerously against something solid, perhaps caught between two points, since its position did not seem to change. The same uncertain anchorage lifted the bows slightly out of the water and formed an unstable pivot, causing the craft to rock wildly with his movements. The darkness was impenetrable, affording him no opportunity of seeing the impossible obstruction.
He carefully worked his way forward to explore the object against which they were so dangerously halted. What he felt with his hands provided a considerable psychological shock, for he found himself grasping a Terran-made girder rising above a sunken float. This was almost certainly part of the wreckage from the break; perhaps a section broken off and isolated, or perhaps connected to a continuing section of the railway. There was no answer as to which was true, nor any obvious course of action. If it was isolated wreckage he had encountered, it would be futile to mount it, since it would offer precisely no advantage over their present predicament. But if this was the Base end of the break which he thought they had passed ... then this was the way to salvation.
In an agony of indecision he attempted to climb up the girder-work a couple of steps in the hope of clarifying the situation. He had scarcely started when he realized what a difficult and dangerous exploit this was in the darkness, and how unfit he was for the task. He stepped down again, and froze with horror as he did so, for the boat containing Martha had slipped from its niche and had gone drifting off alone into the absolute of night.
Perhaps he cried, perhaps he blacked-out with the shock and the reaction, while still maintaining a precarious hold on the girder. He was never afterwards certain of his actions at that moment. He remembered shouting Martha’s name until his voice gave out, and somehow restraining himself from plunging into the murderously abrasive drift in an insane attempt to regain the vessel. Somehow, at some time, he must have climbed upwards to the decking and then miraculously fallen down unconscious within half a metre of a new break in the staging, which would certainly have killed him had he continued. But the thing that he did remember was waking and seeing lights hurrying towards him and the sound of running feet. Then the sound of the voice of Max Colindale at his shoulder, saying: “Hell, Blick, what took you so long?” and “What about Martha?”
“She’s in the boat,” said Blick painfully, indicating the general direction of the ocean. “Out there somewhere. I brought her with me.”
“I’d have staked my life on that,” said Colindale. He went away and shortly the scream of skimmer engines beat the air, and the night was bewilderingly filled with patterns of searchlights and flares which moved off slowly into a curious firefly ritual dance across the tides of darkness.
They made Blick comfortable on a stretcher and gave him a little warm, thin soup, but made no attempt to move him until morning. When it was light he could see the reason why. He was on the Base side of the break, and even here the decking of the railway was dangerously torn and twisted by the wrench that had torn away thirteen stations and forty-five kilometres of rail in one of the mightiest surges that had ever been observed in the enigmatic ocean which covered the planet. Only by day was it possible to manoeuvre anything like a stretcher the four last kilometres to the sounder part of the railway.
“Did we lose many people?” asked Blick of one of his bearers.
The man was grave. “So far Martha Sorenson and yourself are the only known survivors out of seventy-eight missing. Now the skimmers are here, there’s hope for a few more, but if we see another thirty alive, I’ll be very much surprised. What beats me is how the hell Colindale knew that you and Martha would come through. You were in the worst position of all, but he’s been like a cat on hot bricks for days just waiting for you to come in.”
“Did he have any money on it?” asked Blick.
The bearer looked straight ahead. “Some,” he said. “Some of nearly everybody’s,” he added as an afterthought.
* * * *
“What’s the latest news on Martha?” asked Blick.
“She’s going to be all right,” said Colindale. “She was in a bad way when they picked her up, and, frankly, it was a near thing, Blick. If you hadn’t fetched her in I doubt if we’d have been able to get to her in time.”
Blick nodded. “I saw it coming. She didn’t have reserves enough to stand that for long. I suspect she’d been dieting pretty heavily. I’d have fetched her in before if I could have seen just how it could be done. That was one hell of a problem. Tell me, Max, why were you so damn certain that Martha and I would come through?”
Colindale pursed his lips. “Experience. Nothing conquers adversity like perversity—and you two are the most perverse individuals I’ve had the misfortune to encounter. I was unlikely to be lucky enough to lose the two of you simultaneously.”
“But seriously, Max ...”
“Seriously, Blick, you have a reputation for resolving problems from the wrong end. Logically, you didn’t stand a chance in Hell, but, with Martha there too, I was certain that, if there was a way out, you’d find it. Petroni on the Rescue Squad is going quietly crazy trying to work out how you made that boat.”
“We electroformed it,” said Blick. “Out of copper sulphate solution.”
“I guessed something like that,” said Colindale. “But how? I’ll admit I’m an engineer and not a chemist, but I still don’t see how you can electroform something without having any available power.”
“It’s a little complicated,” said Blick, “but I’ll try to explain. Up at the station, I’d installed a few devices of my own in the plant to allow me more time on the research projects. One device depended on the fact that a metal in a solution of its own ions develops an electrical potential, and this potential is dependent on the concentration of ions with which it is in contact.”
“I’m not quite sure that I follow that,” said Colindale.
“No, but it’s simple electrochemistry. Imagine a tube filled with dilute acid in which a crystal of copper sulphate is dissolving at the bottom. If copper electrodes are inserted one at the top and one at the bottom of the tube, connected to a circuit, a current will flow in the circuit which will tend to try to equalize the concentration of copper ions in the tube by depositing copper on the lower electrode and dissolving it from the upper. When the concentration of copper ions is the same throughout the tube, the current will cease.”
“I’m with you that far,” said Colindale.
“Good. Now put the same electrodes at the top and bottom of an ion exchange column and pour in copper sulphate and you have a similar state of affairs. The concentration of copper ions at the top of the column will be very high and, until the resin all the way to the bottom of the column has exhausted its capacity to take up copper ions, the concentration at the bottom of the column will be very low. Thus a current will flow all the time a column is doing useful work. This current I used to control the automatic recycling equipment. As a bonus, when you regenerate the column by adding acid at the top and taking your concentrate from the bottom, a current also flows, but on opposite polarity. This was made to complete the control cycle.”
“Ingenious!” said Colindale.
“It has possibilities,” said Blick. “By observing the polarity of the current you know on what part of the cycle the column is engaged. When the current ceases, it indicates the column is fully exhausted or regenerated, as the case may be, and variations from the standard current value give the first indication of when the pickup pumps begin to bring up a contaminated stream. And all this for the price of a few pieces of copper and some wire.”
“And you managed to use this current to electroform the boat?”
Blick nodded. “Yes, and I had to rewire nearly every damn column in the place to get enough potential. Fortunately, I was able to use the current from both the running and the regeneration parts of the cycle, so we kept up a fairly continuous process. By a combination of God and guesswork, we made it.”
Colindale leaned back in his chair. “We’re still looking for someone to head the research team, Blick. I know you’ve refused before, but I still think you’re the man for the job.”
“Thanks, Max, but the answer’s still the same.”
“Very well! Then let’s come to the next point of this interview.”
Colindale brought out a file and laid it on the table. “These are your letters in which you warned me in some detail that the catastrophe which has occurred was likely to occur. In defence, I can only say that it was the balance of the reasoned arguments of a whole army of professional planetary oceanographers, engineers and similar authorities against your unsupported opinion which decided me to do nothing. But hindsight is a lot clearer than foresight. I realize now that my decision was incorrect—but it was a rational judgment in the light of the evidence then available. I must ask you now if you want this file put before the Space Commission when they set up a Court of Enquiry into all this?”
Blick took the file and tore it across. “As you say. Max, it was only my unsupported opinion. I see no point in confusing the Commission with unfounded speculation, even if it was correct. Besides, it’d look bad in the Press.”
“Thanks, Blick! I shan’t forget that in a hurry.”
“And I don’t want any favours,” said Blick. “Not from you, anyway.”
“Hmm! And that’s another thing,” said Colindale. “Your wife’s on her way from Delta Five on the Auxiliary due tomorrow. She asked for special Company dispensation for the trip when you were listed missing. I was so damn sure you’d come through that I granted it. I suggest you go straight back with her and take some leave on Delta.”
“Thanks,” said Blick. “I’ll be sure to remember you in my prayers.” He got up to go, but Colindale called him back.
“Blick, it’s none of my business, but what the hell is there between Martha and you, anyway?”
“I’ll write you a report on it some day,” said Blick obtusely. “But it’s the one type of relationship which has all the ingredients of permanency. Remember that, Max. It gives us something rather unique.”
* * * *
When the Auxiliary landed, Blick was waiting for his wife in the lounge of the spaceport sheds, thankful that the deep-space transmitter had been able to contact the craft and give her the news of his survival. The re-union was a flood of tears, concern and kindliness, a flood which washed against him, moving him outwardly, but leaving a little hard core of pain untouched. Some fibre of anguish stayed unwetted by compassion and rebelled against the cloying warm joys that familiarity had made a habit. He fought against the insurgent streak and conquered it so that it showed as nothing more than a quiet and lingering misery m the corners of his eyes.
As the welcoming was done and they turned to go. Max Colindale entered and came over to them.
“Ah, Blick, I’ve just been examining that boat of yours. We’re still not quite sure how you made it, but it’s dama clever! But what intrigues me is why the Hell call it that name?”
“Name?” Blick looked suddenly fazed and lost. No name had been included in the mould form. Not unless Martha ...
Colindale chuckled and slapped him on the arm. “You’re a great joker, Blick! Fancy calling a boat: ‘One day I just might change my mind.’ “
Blick controlled himself rigidly. “Just a private cynicism,” he said.
“Sure, Blick, sure! But some time you’ll have to explain it to me.”
“You’re big enough and old enough to work it out for yourself,” said Blick.
Colindale swallowed some inner amusement and turned to Blick’s wife. “That’s a clever husband you have there, Jean. One of the most original thinkers that Transgalactic Mining’s ever had. I’d say he could have gone a long way farther if he’d learned not to waste his opportunities.”
“And just what did he mean by that?” asked Jean, as they finally walked the corridor.
“It would take too long to explain,” said Blick, “and you’d be none the happier for knowing. Now bring me up to date on what’s happening to the kids.”