“Now, this is for exploration purposes. But these auxiliary craft are also capable of landing on rockets alone. When the time has come to establish a beam-relay station, some airless lifeless satellite is chosen, to avoid the necessity of quarantine. The craft shuttle back and forth, carrying the ship’s dismantled transceiver. This is reassembled on the surface. Thereby the satellite’s own mass becomes available to the matterbank, and any amount of material can be reconstructed according to the signals from the home station. The first things sent through are usually the parts for a much larger transceiver station, which can handle many tons of mass at a time.”
“Well, good,” said Maclaren. “That was more or less what I thought. Let’s land and — oh, oh.”
Ryerson felt a smile tugging his lips, though it was not a happy one. “You see?” he murmured.
Maclaren regarded him closely. “You don’t seem too discouraged,” he said. “There must be an answer.”
Ryerson nodded. “I’ve already spoken with Seiichi about it, while you were busy determining the exact characteristics of the planet. It’s not going to be fun, but — Well, let him tell you.”
Maclaren said slowly: “I had hoped, it was at least possible, that any planet we found would have a surviving satellite, small enough to land the whole ship on, or lay alongside, if you want to consider it that way. It would have been the best thing for us. But I’m sure now that this lump has no companion of any kind. So we’ll have to get our germanium down there.”
“Which we could also have done, had we been fortunate enough to locate the planet sooner,” Nakamura told him. “We can take aircraft down to the surface even now. But we would have to transship all the mining and separating equipment, establish a working space and an airdome — It is too much work for three men to do before our three weeks of supplies are eaten up, and then the actual mining would still remain.”
Maclaren nodded. “I should have thought of this myself,” he said. “I wonder how sane and sensible we are — how can we measure rationality, when we are all the human race we know for tens of light-years? Well. So I didn’t think and you didn’t talk. Nevertheless, I gather there’s a way out of our dilemma.”
“Yes,” said the pilot. “A riskful way, but any other is certain death. We can take the ship down, and use her for our ready-made workshop and airdome.”
“The Cross? But… well, of course the gravitation here is no problem to her, nor the magnetism now that the drive is shielded — but we can’t make a tail landing. We’d crumple the web, and… hell’s clanging bells, she can’t land at all! She’s not designed for it! Not maneuverable enough, why, it takes half an hour just to swing her clear around on gyros.”
Nakamura said calmly, “I have made calculations for some time now, preparing for this eventuality. There was nothing we could do before knowing what we would actually find, but I do have some plans drawn up. We have six knocked-down auxiliary craft. Yes? It will not take long to assemble their non-ionic rocket drives, which are very simple devices, clamp these to the outside hull, and run their control systems through the ship’s console. I think if we all work hard we can have it assembled, tested, and functioning in two or three days. Each pair of rockets should be so mounted as to form a couple which will rotate the ship around one of the three orthogonal space axes. No? Thus the spaceship will become most highly responsive to piloting. Furthermore, we shall cut up the aircraft hulls, as well as whatever else we may need and can spare for this purpose, such as interior fittings. From this, we shall construct a tripod enclosing and protecting the stern assembly. It will be clumsy and unbalanced, of course — but I trust my poor maneuverings can compensate for that — and it will be comparatively weak — but with the help of radar and our powerful ion-blast, the ship can be landed very gently.”
“Hm-m-m.” Maclaren rubbed his chin. His eyes flickered between the other two faces. “It shouldn’t be hard to fix those rocket motors in place, as you say. But a tripod more than a hundred meters long, for a thing as massive as this ship — I don’t know. If nothing else, how about the servos for it?”
“Please.” Nakamura waved his words aside. “I realize we have not time to do this properly. My plan does not envision anything with self-adjusting legs. A simple, rigid structure must suffice. We can use the radar to select a nearly level landing place.”
“All places are, down there,” said Maclaren. “That iron was boiling once, and nothing has weathered it since. Of course, there are doubtless minor irregularities, which would topple us on our tripod — with a thousand tons of mass to hit the ground!”
Nakamura’s eyes drooped. “It will be necessary for me to react quickly,” he said. “That is the risk we take.”
When the ship was prepared, they met once on the observation deck, to put on their spacesuits. The hull might be cracked in landing. Maclaren and Ryerson would be down at the engine controls, Nakamura in the pilot’s turret, strapped into acceleration harness with only their hands left free.
Nakamura’s gaze sought Maclaren’s. “We may not meet again,” he said.
“Possible,” said Maclaren.
The small, compact body held steady, but Nakamura’s face thawed. He had suddenly, after all the time which was gone, taken on an expression; and it was gentle.
“Since this may be my last chance,” he said, “I would like to thank you.”
“Whatever for?”
“I am not afraid any more.”
“Don’t thank me,” said Maclaren, embarrassed. “Something like that, a chap does for himself, y’ know.”
“You earned me the time for it, at least.” Nakamura made a weightless bow. “Sensei, give me your blessing.”
Maclaren said, with a degree of bewilderment: “Look here, everybody else has had more skill, contributed more, than I. I’ve told you a few things about the star and the planet, but you — Dave, at least — could have figured it out with slightly more difficulty. I’d never have known how to reconstruct a drive or a web, though; and I’d never be able to land this ship.”
“I was not speaking of material survival,” said Nakamura. A smile played over his mouth. “Still, do you remember how disorganized and noisy we were at first, and how we have grown so quiet since and work together so well? It is your doing. The highest interhuman art is to make it possible for others to use their arts.” Then, seriously: “The next stage of achievement, though, lies within a man. You have taught me. Knowingly or not, Terangi-san, you have taught me. I would give much to be sure you will… have the chance… to teach yourself.”
Ryerson appeared from the lockers. “Here they are,” he said. “Tin suits all around.”
Maclaren donned his armor and went aft. I wonder how much Seiichi knows. Does he know that I’ve stopped making a fuss about things, that I didn’t exult when we found this planet, not from stoicism but merely because I have been afraid to hope?
I wouldn’t even know what to hope for. All this struggle, just to get back to Earth and resume having fun? No, that’s too grotesque.
“We should have issued the day’s chow before going down,” said Ryerson. “Might not be in any shape to eat it at the other end.”
“Who’s got an appetite under present circumstances?” said Maclaren. “So postponing dinner is one way of stretching out the rations a few more hours.”
“Seventeen days’ worth, now.”
“We can keep going, foodless, for a while longer.”
“We’ll have to,” said Ryerson. He wet his lips. “We won’t mine our metal, and gasify it, and separate out the fractional per cent of germanium, and make those transistors, and tune the circuits, in any seventeen days.”