Sand Doom Part 5

Men came in. There were dark men with rippling muscles under glistening skin, and bronze Amerinds with coa.r.s.e straight hair. Ralph Redfeather was with them. Dr. Chuka came in last of all.

"Here we are," said Redfeather. "These are our foremen. Among us, I think we can answer any questions you want to ask."

He made introductions. Bordman didn't try to remember the names.

Abeokuta and Northwind and Sutata and Tallgra.s.s and T'ckka and Spottedhorse and Lewanika---- They were names which in combination would only be found in a very raw, new colony. But the men who crowded into the office were wholly at ease, in their own minds as well as in the presence of a senior Colonial Survey officer. They nodded as they were named, and the nearest shook hands. Bordman knew that he'd have liked their looks under other circ.u.mstances. But he was humiliated by the conditions on this planet. They were not. They were apparently only sentenced to death by them.

"I have to leave a report," said Bordman curtly--and he was somehow astonished to know that he did expect to leave a report rather than make one; he accepted the hopelessness of the colony's future--"on the degree-of-completion of the work here. But since there's an emergency, I have also to leave a report on the measures taken to meet it."

The report would be futile, of course. As futile as the coup-records Aletha was compiling, which would be read only after everybody on the planet was dead. But Bordman knew he'd write it. It was unthinkable that he shouldn't.

"Redfeather tells me," he added, again curtly, "that the power in storage can be used to cool the colony buildings--and therefore condense drinking water from the air--for just about six months. There is food for about six months. If one lets the buildings warm up a little, to stretch the fuel, there won't be enough water to drink. Go on half rations to stretch the food, and there won't be enough water to last and the power will give out anyhow. No profit there!"

There were nods. The matter had been thrashed out long before.

"There's food in the _Warlock_ overhead," Bordman went on coldly, "but they can't use the landing boat more than a few times. It can't use s.h.i.+p fuel. No refrigeration to hold it stable. They couldn't land more than a ton of supplies all told. There are five hundred of us here. No help there!"

He looked from one to another.

"So we live comfortably," he told them with irony, "until our food and water and minimum night-comfort run out together. Anything we do to try to stretch anything is useless because of what happens to something else. Redfeather tells me you accept the situation. What are you doing--since you accept it?"

Dr. Chuka said amiably:

"We've picked a storage place for our records, and our miners are blasting out s.p.a.ce in which to put away the record of our actions to the last possible moment. It will be sandproof. Our mechanics are building a broadcast unit we'll spare a tiny bit of fuel for. It will run twenty-odd years, broadcasting directions so it can be found regardless of how the terrain is changed by drifting sand."

"And," said Bordman, "the fact that n.o.body will be here to give directions."

Chuka added benignly:

"We're doing a great deal of singing, too. My people are ... ah ...

religious. When we are ... ah ... no longer here ... there have been boastings that there'll be a well-practiced choir ready to go to work in the next world."

White teeth showed in grins. Bordman was almost envious of men who could grin at such a thought. But he went on grimly:

"And I understand that athletics have also been much practiced."

Redfeather said:

"There's been time for it. Climbing teams have counted coup on all the worst mountains within three hundred miles. There's been a new record set for the javelin, adjusted for gravity constant, and Johnny Cornstalk did a hundred yards in eight point four seconds. Aletha has the records and has certified them."

"Very useful!" said Bordman sardonically. Then he disliked himself for saying it even before the bronze-skinned men's faces grew studiedly impa.s.sive.

Chuka waved his hand.

"Wait, Ralph! Lewanika's nephew will beat that within a week!"

Bordman was ashamed again because Chuka had spoken to cover up his own ill-nature.

"I take it back!" he said irritably. "What I said was uncalled for. I shouldn't have said it! But I came here to do a completion survey and what you've been giving me is material for an estimate of morale! It's not my line! I'm a technician, first and foremost! We're faced with a technical problem!"

Aletha spoke suddenly from behind him.

"But these are men, first and foremost, Mr. Bordman. And they're faced with a very human problem--how to die well. They seem to be rather good at it, so far."

Bordman ground his teeth. He was again humiliated. In his own fas.h.i.+on he was attempting the same thing. But just as he was genetically not qualified to endure the climate of this planet, he was not prepared for a fatalistic or pious acceptance of disaster. Amerind and African, alike, these men instinctively held to their own ideas of what the dignity of a man called upon him to do when he could not do anything but die. But Bordman's idea of his human dignity required him to be still fighting: still scratching at the eyes of fate or destiny when he was slain. It was in his blood or genes or the result of training. He simply could not, with self-respect, accept any physical situation as hopeless even when his mind a.s.sured him that it was.

"I agree," he said coldly, "but still I have to think in technical terms. You might say that we are going to die because we cannot land the _Warlock_ with food and equipment. We cannot land the _Warlock_ because we have no landing grid. We have no landing grid because it and all the material to complete it is buried under millions of tons of sand. We cannot make a new light-supply-s.h.i.+p type of landing grid because we have no smelter to make beams, nor power to run it if we had, yet if we had the beams we could get the power to run the smelter we haven't got to make the beams. And we have no smelter, hence no beams, no power, no prospect of food or help because we can't land the _Warlock_. It is strictly a circular problem. Break it at any point and all of it is solved."

One of the dark men muttered something under his breath to those near him. There were chuckles.

"Like Mr. Woodchuck," explained the man, when Bordman's eyes fell on him. "When I was a little boy there was a story like that."

Bordman said icily:

"The problem of coolness and water and food is the same sort of problem.

In six months we could raise food--if we had power to condense moisture. We've chemicals for hydroponics--if we could keep the plants from roasting as they grew. Refrigeration and water and food are practically another circular problem."

Aletha said tentatively:

"Mr. Bordman----"

He turned, annoyed. Aletha said almost apologetically:

"On Chagan there was a--you might call it a woman's coup given to a woman I know. Her husband raises horses. He's mad about them. And they live in a sort of home on caterwheels out on the plains--the llanos.

Sometimes they're months away from a settlement. And she loves ice cream and refrigeration isn't too simple. But she has a Doctorate in Human History. So she had her husband make an insulated tray on the roof of their trailer and she makes her ice cream there."

Men looked at her. Her cousin said amusedly:

"That should rate some sort of technical-coup feather!"

"The Council gave her a bra.s.s pot--official," said Aletha. "Domestic science achievement." To Bordman she explained: "Her husband put a tray on the roof of their house, insulated from the heat of the house below.

During the day there's an insulated cover on top of it, insulating it from the heat of the sun. At night she takes off the top cover and pours her custard, thin, in the tray. Then she goes to bed. She has to get up before daybreak to sc.r.a.pe it up, but by then the ice cream is frozen.

Even on a warm night." She looked from one to another. "I don't know why. She said it was done in a place called Babylonia on Earth, many thousands of years ago."

Bordman blinked. Then he said decisively:

"d.a.m.n! Who knows how much the ground-temperature drops here before dawn?"

"I do," said Aletha's cousin, mildly. "The top-sand temperature falls forty-odd degrees. Warmer underneath, of course. But the air here is almost cool when the sun rises. Why?"

"Nights are cooler on all planets," said Bordman, "because every night the dark side radiates heat to empty s.p.a.ce. There'd be frost everywhere every morning if the ground didn't store up heat during the day. If we prevent daytime heat-storage--cover a patch of ground before dawn and leave it covered all day--and uncover it all night while s.h.i.+elding it from warm winds---- We've got refrigeration! The night sky is empty s.p.a.ce itself! Two hundred and eighty below zero!"

There was a murmur. Then argument. The foremen of the Xosa II colony-preparation crew were strictly practical men, but they had the habit of knowing why some things were practical. One does not do modern steel construction in contempt of theory, nor handle modern mining tools without knowing why as well as how they work. This proposal sounded like something that was based on reason--that should work to some degree.

But how well? Anybody could guess that it should cool something at least twice as much as the normal night temperature-drop. But somebody produced a slipstick and began to juggle it expertly. He astonishedly announced his results. Others questioned, and then verified it. n.o.body paid much attention to Bordman. But there was a hum of absorbed discussion, in which Redfeather and Chuka were immediately included. By calculation, it astoundingly appeared that if the air on Xosa II was really as clear as the bright stars and deep day-sky color indicated, every second night a total drop of one hundred and eighty degrees temperature could be secured by radiation to interstellar s.p.a.ce--if there were no convection-currents, and they could be prevented by----

It was the convection-current problem which broke the a.s.sembly into groups with different solutions. But it was Dr. Chuka who boomed at all of them to try all three solutions and have them ready before daybreak, so the a.s.sembly left the hulk, still disputing enthusiastically. But somebody had recalled that there were dewponds in the one arid area on Timbuk, and somebody else remembered that irrigation on Delmos III was accomplished that same way. And they recalled how it was done----