This request began to come in just as Easy finished her sentence and long before either Kabremm or Barlennan could have got a reply back to it./ Mersereau and Aucoin were still gone, so Benj had no hesitation about passing Dondragmer’s orders along; and Easy, after a second or two of thought, shelved the Kabremm question and reported the same information to Barlennan. If Don saw the situation as an emergency, she was willing to go along with his opini0n; he was on the scene. She did not take her eyes from the screen which showed Kabremm’s image, however; his presence still needed explanation. She, too, helped Barlennan unwittingly at this point.
After completing the relay of Dondragmer’s orders, she added a report of her own which clarified much for the commander.
“I don’t know how up to date you are, Barl; things have been happening rather suddenly. Don sent out a foot party with a communicator to look for Kervenser and Reffel. This was the group which is bothering Don so much, and at the same time ran into Kabremm. I don’t know how he got there, thousands of miles from the Esket, but we’ll get his story and relay it to you as soon as we can. I’ve sometimes wondered wheter he and any of the others were alive, but I never really hoped for it. I know the life-support equipment in the cruisers is supposed to be removable in case the vehicles had to be abandoned; but there was never any sign of anything being taken from the Esket. This will be useful news as well as pleasant; there must be some way for you people to live on at least some parts of Dhrawn without human equipment.”
Barlennan’s answer was a conventional acknowledgement-plus-thanks, given with very little of his attention. Easy’s closing sentence had started a new train of thought in his mind.
Benj had paid little attention to his mother’s words, having a conversation of his own to maintain. He relayed Dondragmer’s command to the foot party, say the group break up accordingly — though he failed to interpret the confusion caused by Kabremm’s telling Stakendee how he had reached the spot — and reported the start of the new mission to the captain. He followed the report, however, with comments of his own.
“Captain, I hope this isn’t going to take all your men. I know there’s a lot of work in getting your life equipment to the bank, but surely you can keep on with the job of melting the Kwembly loose. You’re not just giving up in the ship, are you? And you still have Beetch and his friend underneath — you can’t just abandon them. It won’t take many men to get the heater going, it seems to me.”
Dondragmer had formed by now a pretty clear basic picture of Benj’s personality, though some detailed aspects of it were fundamentally beyond his grasp. He answered as tactfully as he could.
I’m certainly not giving up the Kwembly while there’s any reasonably chance of saving her,” he said, “but the presence of liquid only a few miles away forces me to assume that the risk of another flood is now very high. My crew, as a group, comes first. The metal bar we have cut form the hull will be lowered to the ground in a few more minutes. Once that is done, only Borndender and one other man will be left on the heater detail. Everyone else, except of course, Stakendee’s crew, will start immediately carrying plant tanks and lights to the side of the valley. I do not want to abandon my helmsmen, but if I get certain news that high water is on the way we are all going to head for higher ground wheter or not any are still missing. I gather you don’t like the idea, but I am sure you see why there is no other possible course.” The captain fell silent, neither knowing nor greatly caring wheter Benj had an answer for this; there was too much else to consider.
He stood watching as the heavy length of metal, which was to be a heater if everyone’s ideas worked out, was eased toward the Kwembly’s starboard side. Lines were attached to it, snubbed around the climbing holdfasts, and held by men on the ice who were carefully giving length under the orders of Praffen. The latter, perched on the helicopter lock panel with his front end reared four inches higher, watched and gestured commands as the starboard par of the long strip of metal slid slowly away form him and the other side approached. Dondragmer cringed slightly as the sailor seemed about to be brushed off the hell by the silvery length of alloy, but Praffen let it pass under him with plenty of legs still on the plastic and at least three pairs of pincers gripping the holdfasts. With this personal risk ended he let the rope men work a little fast, and it took less than five more minutes to get the bar down to the ice.
Dondragmer had redonned his airsuit during the last part of the operation and gone out on the hull again, where he hooted a number of orders. Everyone else outside obediently headed for the main lock to start transferring the life support equipment; the captain himself reented the bridge to get back in radio contact with Benj and Stakendee.
The boy had said nothing during the lowering-away, which had been carried out in view of the bridge communicator. What he could see required no explanation. He was a little unhappy at the disappearance of the crew afterward, for, of course, Dondragmer had been right; Benj did not like the idea of the entire group being diverted to the abandon-ship operation. However, the emergency of two Mesklinites with a power box gave him something to watch besides Stakendee’s upstream crawl on the adjacent screen.
Benj did not know which of the two was Borndender, but wasn’t worried. Their actions were of more interest. And their troubles with the radiator made interesting watching.
The wire was rigid enough to have held its shape fairly well as it was moved, and now lay flat on the ice in much the same form it had had when attached to the hull — that is, rather like a long, narrow hairpin near the center where it outlined the helicopter lock, and the cut ends some two feet apart. The original vertical component of its curvature which had been impressed by the shape of the hull had flattened out under gravity. The unit had been turned over during the lowering so that the prongs which had attached it to the plastic were now pointing upward; hence there was good contact with the ice for practically its entire length.
The Mesklinites spent a few minutes trying to straighten it out; Benj got the impression that they wanted to run it around the side of the hull as closely as possible. However, it finally appeared to dawn on them that the free ends would have to be close together in order to go into the same power box, so they left the wire along and dragged the power unit aft. One of them examined the holes in the box and the ends of the wire carefully, while the other stood by.
Benj could not see the box very well, since its image on the screen was very small, but he was familiar with similar machines. It was a standard piece of equipment which had needed very little modification to render it usable on Dhrawn. There were several kinds of power takeoff on it besides the rotating field used for mechanical drive. The direct electrical current which Borndender wanted could be drawn from any of several places; there were contact plates on opposite sides of the box which could be energized, several different sizes of jack-type bipolar sockets, and simple unipolar sockets at opposite ends of the box. The platters would have been easiest, but the Mesklinites, as Benj learned later, had dismissed them as too dangerous; they chose to use the end sockets. This meant that one end of the “hairpin” had to go into one end of the unit, and the other into the other end. Borndender already knew that the wire was a little large for the holes and would have to be filed down, and had brought the appropriate tools with him; this was no problem. Bending the ends, however, so that short lengths of them pointed toward each other, was a different matter. While he was still working on this problem, the rest of the crew emerged from the main lock with their burden of hydroponic tanks, pumps, lights and power units, and headed northward toward the side of the valley. Borndender ignored them, except for a brief glance while he was wondering wheter he could commandeer some assistance.