None of the bustle and thumping, however, penetrated the mattress where Beetchermarlf and Takoorch still lay concealed. As nearly as could be judged later, they must have sought this shelter within a very few minutes of the time the resistance heater went into action. The thick, rubbery material of the mattress itself, which had been so difficult for even a Mesklinite-wielded knife to penetrate, blocked the sounds made by the crackling steam-bubbles around the hot metal and the calls of the workers who entered later. Had these last been forced to communicate with anyone at a distance, their resonant hooting might well have made its way even through that tough material; but there was little for them to say even to each other; they all knew their jobs perfectly well. The slit through which the helmsmen had found their entrance was held tightly enough closed by the elasticity of the fabric so that no light reached them. Finally, the Mesklinite personality trait most nearly described as a combination of patience and fatalism assured that neither Beetchermarlf nor his companion was likely to check outside their refuge until the breathing hydrogen in their suits became a serious problem.

As a result, even if Dondragmer had heard Benj’s appeal, there would have been nothing for him to signal. The helmsmen, some three feet above some of their companions and a like distance below many others, were not found.

Not quite all the Kwembly’s crew were engaged in preparation for the move. When the most necessary aspects of that operation had been arranged, Dondragmer called two of his sailors for a special detail.

“Go to the stream, head northwest and you can’t miss it, and go upstream until you find Kabremm and the Gwelf” he ordered. “Tell him what we are doing. We will set up a livable site as quickly as we can, you tell him where; you’ve been there and I haven’t. We will set up the human machines so they are looking into the lighted, active portion of that area. That will make it safe for him to bring the Gwelfdown and land her anywhere outside that area, with no risk of being seen by the human beings. Tell him that the commander seems to be starting the native-life part of the play early, apparently to account for Kabremm’s being seen in this neighborhood. He’s suggested no details, and will probably stick to the original idea of letting the human beings invent their own.

“When you have seen Kabremm, go on upstream until you find Stakendee, and give him the same information. Be careful about getting into the view field of his communicator; when you think you may be getting near him, shut off your lights every little while and look for his. I’ll be in touch with him through the human beings, of course, but not with that message. You understand.”

“Yes, Sir,” the two replied in unison, and were gone.

The hours passed. The main lock was freed and opened, and nearly all the material to be taken was outside when a call came from above. The communicator which had been in the laboratory was now outside, so Dondragmer could be reached directly. Benj was still the speaker.

“Captain, Stakendee reports that the stream he is following is getting noticeably broader and swifter, and that the clouds are becoming rain. I’ve told him to start back, on my own responsibility.” The captain looked up at the still cloudless sky, then westward toward the place where Stakendee’s fog might have shown if it had been daylight.

“Thanks, Benj. That’s what I would have ordered. We’re leaving the Kwembly right now before the stream gets too big to cross with the equipment. I have lashed the communicator down to the bridge and will leave the lights on as Mr. McDevitt requested. We’ll hope you can tell us that it’s safe to come back, before too long. Please report this to Barlennan, and tell him that we will watch as carefully as possible for the natives; if, as he seems to be suggesting, they are using Kabremm as a means of getting in touch with us, I will do my best to set up cooperative relations with them. Remember, I haven’t seen Kabremm myself yet, and you haven’t mentioned him since the first time, so I’m entirely in the dark about his status so far.

“Be sure to keep me informed of Barlennan’s thoughts and plans, as far as you can; I’ll do the same from here, but things may happen too quickly for any possible advance warning. Watch your screens. That’s all for now; we’re starting.”

The captain uttered a resonant hoot which, fortunately for human ears, was not faithfully amplified by the set. The Mesklinites fell into rough line, and within two minutes were gone from the field of view of the bridge communicator.

The other set was being borne near the tail of the line, so the screen far above showed the string of lights bobbing in front of it. Little else could be seen. The nearest sailors, those within two or three yards of the lens, could be made out in reasonable detail as they wound among the boulders with their burdens, but that was all. The line could have been flanked on both sides twenty feet away by a legion of natives, without any human being the wiser. Aucoin was neither the first nor the last to curse Dhrawn’s 1500-hour rotation period; there were still over six hundred hours to go before the feeble daylight from Lalande 21185 would return.

The stream was still small when the group splashed through it, though Stakendee’s set a few miles west had confirmed the report that it was growing. Benj, noticing this, suggested that the small party also cross so that its members could meet the main body on the other side of the valley. Fortunately he made this suggestion to Dondragmer before acting on his own; the captain, remembering the two messengers he had sent upstream, hastily advised that the crossing be postponed as long as possible so that Stakendee and his men could compare more accurately the size of the stream with what it had been when they had passed the same area earlier. Benj and Easy accepted this excuse. lb Hoffman, quite aware that the foot party was carrying no time measuring devices and could give no meaningful report on the rate of change, was startled for a few seconds. Then he smiled, privately.

For minutes, which stretched into one hour and then another, there was little to watch. The crew reached and climbed the bare rock sides of the valley at the spot where the first load of equipment had been left, and set about constructing something which might have been called either a camp or a town. Life-support equipment had first priority, of course. It would be many hours yet before any air-suits would need recharging, but the time would come. For organisms as profligate of energy as the Mesklinites, food was also a matter of immediate concern. They set about it quickly and efficiently; Dondragmer, like the rest of the cruiser captains, had given plenty of advance thought to the problem of abandoning ship.

Stakendee’s group finally crossed the river and, somewhat later, reached the encampment. The crossing had been approved by Dondragmer after he had received through Benj a message which contained, quite incidentally, the name of one of the messengers the captain had sent from the Kwembly.

Consequently no one, either member of the Kwembly crew or human being, was able to watch the growth of the ammonia-water stream. It would have been an interesting sight. At first, as the witnesses had reported, it was little more than a trickle running from hollow to hollow on the bare rock in the higher reaches of the river bed, men winding among the boulders lower down. As the drops of liquid in the fog coalesced and settled out more rapidly, tiny new tributaries began to feed into the main stream from the sides, and the stream itself grew deeper and faster. On the bare rock it meandered more violently, overflowing the basins which had originally contained it. Here and there it froze temporarily, as water, supplied by the frozen puddles upstream, and ammonia from the fog, shifted about the eutectic, which was liquid at the local temperature: about 174 degrees on the human Kelvin scale, roughly 71 on that used by the Mesklinite scientists.