The human female had evidently received the question and was starting to form a sentence in reply, when her attention was distracted. For several seconds she was obviously listening to something and her eyes shifted away from the pickup of the Settlement communicator. Then her attention came back to Barlennan.

“Commander. Dondragmer has reported again. The Kwembly has stopped, or almost stopped, aground. They are still being dragged a little, however; the flow of liquid has not slowed. They have been tipped so that the trucks are out of contact with whatever surface is below them. If they aren’t dragged free by the river, the/re there to stay; and Dondragmer thinks the level is going down.”

It was a curious, helpless sensation for Beetchermarlf. The Kwembly’s helm was connected to the trucks by simple pulley-and-cord rigging; even Mesklinite muscles could not turn the trucks when the vehicle was at rest, and, while forward motion made steering possible, it certainly did not make it easy. Now, as the vehicle floated with the driving units clear of the bottom, the helm flopped limply in response to a casual nudge or even to a slight roll of the hull. In theory, the cruiser was maneuverable at sea, but this required installing driving paddles on the treads, something most easily done on land. Dondragmer had thought fleetingly, as he realized they were adrift, of sending out air suited men to attempt the task, then decided it wasn’t worth the risk even if everyone were attached solidly to the hull by life-lines. It was likely enough, as far as anyone could tell, that they might reach the end or the edge of the river or lake or whatever they were floating on before any such job could be completed, anyway. If men were outside when that happened, life-lines would be of little use.

The same thoughts had crossed the helmsman’s mind as he lay at his station, but he did not voice them. Beetchermarlf was young, but not so young as to assume that no one else could recognize the obvious. He was quite prepared to grant his captain’s professional competence.

As the minutes slipped by, however, he began to worry at Dondragmer’s failure to issue any orders. Something should be possible; they couldn’t just drift eastward. He glanced at the compass; yes, eastward, indefinitely. There had been hills that way according to the last flight reports, the same hills which had bordered the snow field on their left, sometimes showing slightly above the distant horizon, for the last three or four thousand miles. Judging by their color they were rock, not ice. If the surface the Kwembly was floating on was simply melted snow field, they almost had to hit something soon. Beetchermarlf had no more idea than anyone else how fast they were going but his confidence in the strength of the hull matched that of the captain. He had no more wish to strike a reef on Dhrawn than he had ever had on Mesklin.

Anyhow, the wind should not move them too fast, given the air den-sky The top of the hull was smoothly curved except for the bridge, and the trucks on the bottom should give plenty of drag. As far as the air scouts had been able to tell, the snow field had been level, so the liquid itself shouldn’t be moving. Come to think of it, the outside pressure should give a check on that. The helmsman stirred at the thought, glanced up at the captain, hesitated, and then spoke.

“Sir, how about checking hull-squeeze watch? If there is any current where we’re floating, we’d have to be going downhill, and that should show—” Dondragmer interrupted.

“But the surface was level — no, you’re right. We should check.” He reared up to the bank of speaking tubes and called the laboratory. “Born, how is the pressure? You’re keeping track, of course.”

“Of course, Captain. Both bow and stern safety bladders have been expanding ever since we began to float. We’ve descended about six body lengths in twice that many minutes. I’m about ready to tap more argon.

Dondragmer acknowledged, and looked back at his helmsman.

“Good for you. I should have thought of that. That means we are being carried by current as well as wind and all bets on speed, distance, and where we stop are off. There couldn’t be a current unless the air scouts missed a slope, and if there’s a slope this plateau must drain somewhere.”

“We’re secure for rough travel, Sir. I don’t see what else we can do.”

“There’s one thing,” Dondragmer said grimly He reared to the tubes again, and emitted the siren-like general quarters call. Reasonably sure that all were listening, he pulled his head back so as to be equally distant from all the tubes, and spoke loudly enough to get through them all.

“All hands into air suits as quickly as possible. You are relieved from stations for that purpose, but get back as soon as you can.” He lowered himself to his command bench and addressed Beetchermarlf. “Get your suit and mine, and bring them back here. Quickly!”

The helmsman was back with the garments in ninety seconds. He started to assist the captain with his, but was dismissed by an emphatic gesture and went to work on his own. In two minutes both, protected except for head covering, were back at their stations.

The haste, as it turned out, was unnecessary More minutes passed while Beetchermarlf toyed with the useless helm, and Dondragmer wonde₁cd whether the human scientists were ever going to come through with any information and what use it was likely to be if they did. He hoped that satellite fixes could give him some idea of the Kwembly’s speed; it would, he thought rather cynically, be nice to know how hard they were likely to hit whatever finally stopped them. Such fixes were, he knew, hard to get on order; there were over thirty of the “shadow satellites” in orbit but they were less than three thousand miles above the surface. No attempt had been made to arrange their orbits so that their limited fields of visual and microwave coverage would be either uniform or complete; communication was not their primary purpose. The main human base, in synchronous orbit over six million miles above the Settlement meridian, was supposed to need no help with that task. Also, the ninety-plus mile per second orbital speed of the lower satellites, helpful though the human observers claimed it to be for moving-baseline location checking, still seemed to Dondragmer an inevitable cause of difficulty He was not at all hopeful about getting his speed from this source. That was just as well, because he never did.

Once, about half an hour after they had gone adrift, a brief shudder ran through the Kwembly and the captain duly reported to the station that they had probably touched bottom. Everyone else on board made the same assumption and tension began to mount.

There was a little warning just before the end. A hoot from the laboratory speaking tube was followed by a report that pressure had started to rise more rapidly, and that an additional release of argon into the ship’s atmosphere had been necessary to keep the safety bladders from rupturing. There was no sensation of increasing speed, but the implication of the report was plain enough. They were descending more rapidly How fast were they going horizontally? The captain and helmsman looked at each other, not asking the question aloud but reading it in each other’s expressions. More minutes passed; the tension mounted, chelae gripping stanchions and holdfasts ever more tightly.

Then there was a thunderous clang, and the hull swerved abruptly; another, and it tilted sharply to starboard. For several seconds it pitched violently, and those near bow and stern could feel it yawing as well, though the fog still blocked any outside view which might have explained the sensation. Then there was another, much louder clang and the Kwembly rolled some sixty degrees to starboard; but this time she did not recover. Scraping, grinding sounds suggested that she was moving slightly, but no real change of attitude accompanied them. For the first time, the sound of liquid rushing past the hull became noticeable.