„What is it, Barl?” Lackland called instantly.
„I don’t know,” the captain replied. „I thought for an instant it might be your rocket down looking for the islands to guide us better, but it’s smaller and very different in shape.”
„But it’s something flying?”
Tes. It does not make any noise like your rocket, however. I’d say it was being blown by the wind, except that it’s moving too smoothly and regularly and in the wrong direction. I don’t know how to describe it; it’s wider than it is long, and a little bit Wee a mast set cross wise on a spar. I can’t get closer than that.”
„Could you angle one of the vision sets upward so we could get a look at it?”
„We’ll try.” Lackland immediately put through a call on the station telephone for one of the biologists.
„Lance, it looks as though Barlennan has run into a flying animal of some sort. We’re trying to arrange a look at it. Want to come down to the screen room to tell us what we’re looking at?”
„I’ll be right with you.” The biologist’s voice faded toward the end of the sentence; he was evidently already on his way out of the room. He arrived before the sailors had the vision set propped up, but dropped into a chair without asking questions. Barlennan was speaking again.
„It’s passing back and forth over the ship, sometimes in straight lines and sometimes in circles. Whenever it turns it tips, but nothing else about it changes. It seems to have a little body where the two sticks meet. ” He went on with his description, but the object was evidently too far outside his normal experience for him to find adequate similes in a strange language.
„If it does come into view, be prepared to squint,” the voice of one of the technicians cut in. „I’m covering that screen with a high-speed camera, and will have to jump the brightness a good deal in order to get a decent exposure.”
„. there are smaller sticks set across the long one, and what looks like a very thin sail stretched between them. It’s swinging back toward us again, very low now — I think it may come in front of your eye this time….”
The watchers stiffened, and the hand of the photographer tightened on a double-pole switch whose closing would activate his camera and step up the gain on the screen. Ready as he was, the object.was well into the field before he reacted, and everyone in the room got a good glimpse before the suddenly bright light made their eyes close involuntarily. They all saw enough.
No one spoke while the cameraman energized the develop-ing-frequency generator, rewound his film through its poles, swung the mounted camera toward the blank wall of the room, and snapped over the projection switch. Everyone had thoughts enough to occupy him for the fifteen seconds the operation required.
The projection was slowed down by a factor of fifty, and everyone could look as long as he pleased. There was no reason for surprise that Barlennan had been unable to describe the thing; he had never dreamed that such a thing as flying was possible until after his meeting with Lackland a few months before, and had no words in his own language for anything connected with the art. Among the few English words of that group he had learned, „fuselage” and „wing” and „empennage” were not included.
The object was not an animal. It had a body — fuselage, as the men thought of it — some three feet long, half the length of the canoe Barlennan had acquired. A slender rod extending several feet rearward held control surfaces at its extremity. The wings spanned a full twenty feet, and their structure of single main spar and numerous ribs was easily seen through the nearly transparent fabric that covered them. Within his natural limitations, Barlennan had done an excellent job of description.
„What drives it?” asked one of the watchers suddenly. „There’s no propeller or visible jet, and Barlennan said it was silent.”
„It’s a sailplane.” One of the meteorological staff spoke up. „A glider operated by someone who has all the skill of a terrestrial sea gull at making use of the updrafts from the front side of a wave. It could easily hold a couple of people Barlennan’s size, and could stay aloft until they had to come down for food or sleep.”
The Breeds crew were becoming a trifle nervous. The complete silence of the flying machine, their inability to see who or what was in it, bothered them; no one likes to be watched constantly by someone he can’t see. The glider made no hostile move, but their experience of aerial assault was still fresh enough to leave them uneasy about its presence. One or two had expressed a desire to practice their newly acquired art of throwing, using any hard objects they could find about the deck, but Barlennan had sternly forbidden this. They simply sailed on, wondering, until the hazy dome of the sky darkened with another sunset. No one knew whether to be relieved or worried when the new day revealed no trace of the flying machine. The wind was now stronger, and almost directly across the Bree’s course from the northeast; the waves had not yet followed it and were decidedly choppy in consequence. For the first time Barlennan perceived a disadvantage in the canoe; methane that blew or washed inboard stayed there. He found it necessary before the day was over to haul the little vessel up to the outer rafts and place two men aboard to bail — an act for which he had neither a word nor proper equipment.
The days passed without reappearance of the glider, and eventually only the official lookouts kept their eyes turned upward in expectation of its return. The high haze thickened and darkened, however, and presently turned to clouds which lowered until they hung a scant fifty feet above the sea. Barlennan was informed by the Earthmen that this was not good flying weather, and eliminated the watch. Neither he nor the human beings stopped to wonder how the first glider had found its way on a night too hazy for the stars to provide guidance.
The first of the islands to come into view was fairly high, its ground rising quickly from sea level to disappear into the clouds. It lay downwind from the point where they first sighted it; and Barlennan, after consulting the sketch map of the archipelago he had made from the Earthmen’s descriptions, kept on course. As he had expected, another island appeared dead ahead before the first had faded from sight, and he altered course to pass to leeward of it. This side, according to observation from above, was quite irregular and should have usable harbors; also, Barlennan had no intention of coasting the windward shore during the several nights which would undoubtedly be required for his search.
This island appeared to be high also; not only did its hilltops reach the clouds, but the wind was in large measure cut off as the Bree passed into its lee. The shore line was cut by frequent fiords; Barlennan was intending simply to sail across the mouth of each in the hunt, but Dondragmer insisted that it would be worth while to penetrate to a point well away from the open sea. He claimed that almost any beach far enough up would be adequate shelter. Barlennan was convinced only to the point of wanting to show the mate how wrong he was. Unfortunately for this project, the first fiord examined made a sharp hook-turn half a mile from the ocean and opened into what amounted to a lake, almost perfectly circular and about a hundred yards in diameter. Its walls rose into the mist except at the mouth where the Bree had entered „and a smaller opening only a few yards from the first where a stream from the interior fed into the lake. The only beach was between the two openings.
There was plenty of time to secure both vessel and contents, as it happened; the clouds belonged to the second of the two „normal” cyclones the meteorologist had mentioned, rather than to the major storm. Within a few days of the Bree’s arrival in the harbor the weather cleared once more, though the wind continued high. Barlennan was able to see that the harbor was actually the bottom of a bowl-shaped valley whose walls were less than a hundred feet in height, and not particularly steep. It was possible to see far inland through the cleft cut by, — the small river, provided one climbed a short distance up the walls. In doing this, shortly after the weather cleared, Barlennan made a disconcerting discovery: sea shells, seaweeds, and bones of fairly large sea animals were thickly scattered among the land-type vegetation clothing the hillside. This continued, he discovered upon further investigation, quite uniformly around the valley up to a height fully thirty feet above the present sea level. Many of the remains were old, decayed almost to nothing, and partly buried; these might be accounted for by seasonal changes in the ocean level. Others, however, were relatively fresh. The im-lioation was clear — on certain occasions the sea rose far above its present level; and it was possible that the Bree was not in as safe a position as her crew believed.