“We must find Mven Mass, he still doesn’t know the news!” exclaimed Darr Veter, as though he had suddenly remembered. “Come along with me, Evda. And what about you, Renn?”
“I’ll come too,” said Chara Nandi as she came up.
“May I?”
They went down towards the gently lapping waves. Darr Veter stopped, turned his face to the cool breeze and sighed deeply. Turning round he met Evda Nahl’s eyes.
“I’m going away without returning to the house,” he said in answer to her unasked question. Evda took him by the arm. For some time they walked on in silence.
“I’ve been thinking… must you?” whispered Evda, “but I suppose you must, I suppose you’re right. If Veda…” Evda stopped, but Darr Veter squeezed her hand understandingly and pressed it to his cheek. Renn Bose followed on their heels, carefully edging away from Chara who, with a slightly mocking smile, ogled him with her big eyes and swayed her body exaggeratedly as she walked with long steps beside him. Evda laughed a scarcely audible laugh and suddenly offered the physicist her free arm. Rcnn Bose seized it with a predatory movement that seemed funny in that bashful fellow.
“Where are we to look for your friend?” asked Chara, stopping at the edge of the water. Darr Veter looked round in the bright moonlight and saw fresh footprints on the strip of wet sand. They were made at exactly the same intervals and the soles were turned outward symmetrically with such precision that the footprints seemed to be the work of a machine.
“He went that way,” said Darr Veter pointing towards some big boulders.
“Yes, those are his footprints,” confirmed Evda Nahl.
“Why are you so sure?” asked Chara, doubtfully. “Look at the-regularity of the paces, that’s how primitive hunters walked… or those who have inherited their traits. It seems to me that Mven, despite all his learning, is closer to nature than any of us… although… I don’t know about you; Chara.” Evda turned to the girl who was pondering over something.
“Me? Oh, no!” She pointed forward and exclaimed, “There he is!”
The huge figure of the African, shining like polished black marble in the moonlight, appeared on the nearest boulder. Mven Mass was shaking his fists energetically as though he were threatening somebody. The powerful muscles of his mighty body rose and fell and rolled beneath his gleaming skin.
“He’s like the spirit of the night from the children’s tales,” whispered Chara excitedly. Mven Mass noticed the people approaching him, jumped down from his rock and soon appeared before them with his clothes on. In a few words Darr Veter explained what had happened and Mven Mass expressed a desire to see Veda Kong.
“Go over there with Chara,” said Evda, “and we’ll stay down here for a little while.” Darr Veter made a gesture of farewell and saw by Mven’s face that he had understood. A burst of something like childishness egged Mven on to whisper words of farewell that had long since gone out of usage. Darr Veter was touched by this gesture and walked away, deep in thought, accompanied by the silent Evda. Renn Bose hesitated for a while in some confusion and then followed behind Mven Mass and Chara.
Darr Veter and Evda walked down as far as the cape that protected the bay from the open sea. From there they would see the lights round the huge disc-shaped rafts of the maritime expedition.
Darr Veter pushed a transparent plastic boat off the sand and stood by the water in front of Evda, even more massive and powerful than Mven Mass. Evda stretched up on tiptoes to give her friend a parting kiss.
“Veter, I’ll be with Veda,” she said, as though answering his thoughts. “We’ll go back to our zone together and there we’ll await your arrival. Let me know where you fix yourself up, I’ll always be glad to help you.”
For a long time Evda followed the boat with her eyes as it crossed the silvery sea.
Darr Veter went as far as the second raft where the mechanics were still working in a hurry to set up the accumulators. In response to Veter’s request they lit three green lights in the form of a triangle. An hour and a half later, the first helicopter that came that way hung over the raft, the roar of its engines rumbling over the sleepy sea. Darr Veter entered the lift it lowered; for a second he could be seen against the illuminated bottom of the aircraft and then disappeared through the hatch. By morning he reached his permanent abode near the Council observatory which he had not had time to change for another. Darr Veter opened the air-taps in both his rooms and in a few minutes all dust had vanished. He pulled his bed out of the wall and, tuning his bedroom in to the smell and sounds of the sea that he had lately become accustomed to, was soon sound asleep.
He awoke with a sensation that the beauty of the world had been lost. Veda was far away and would remain far away… now… until…. But he must help her and not complicate matters!
In his bathroom a whirling column of cold electrified water burst upon him. Darr Veter stood under the column of water so long that he began to shiver. Feeling refreshed he went to the televisophone, opened its mirror doors and called up the nearest Registrar of Vacancies. The face of the registrar, a young man, appeared on the screen. He knew Darr Veter and greeted him with a scarcely perceptible shade of respect that was considered the hallmark of politeness.
“I want to get some hard and lengthy job, with tough physical labour,” said Darr Veter, “something like the Antarctic mines!”
“All the jobs there are taken!” answered the registrar, in tones of sincere regret. “All the miner’s jobs on Venus, Mars and even Mercury have been filled too. You know that the young people are always anxious to go where the work is hardest.”
“That’s true but I can no longer place myself in that fine category. What is there now? I want a job immediately.”
“There are the diamond workings in Central Siberia,” began the registrar slowly, glancing at a list that Darr Veter could not see, “that is, if you want mine work. Then there are some jobs on the rafts of the oceanic food-packing plants, at the solar pumping station in Tibet, but that’s easy work. There are some other places, but nothing particularly hard!”
Darr Veter thanked him and asked for some time to think things over and asked him to keep the place open in the diamond workings.
He switched off the Registrar of Vacancies and tuned in to Siberia House, the centre for geographical information concerning that country. His televisophone was switched on to a memory machine that showed him the latest records and he saw pictures of extensive forests go floating past him. The boggy, scanty, larch forests growing on permafrost that had once occupied the region were gone for ever, giving place to such giants as Siberian cedars and American sequoias, trees that had formerly been in danger of extinction. Their gigantic red trunks made a magnificent fence round hills covered with ferroconcrete caps. Steel tubes, thirty feet in diameter, crawled from under the caps and curved over ridges to the nearest rivers that they sucked entirely into their huge scoops. Monstrously huge pumps roared dully. Billions of gallons of water were driven into the volcanic chimneys where the diamonds were found; the water whirled and raged as it washed the clay away and then found its way out again leaving behind tons of diamonds on the grids of the washing chambers. In long, well-lit buildings people were watching the dials of the sorting machines. The brilliant stones were sifted like grain through the calibrated holes of a screen into boxes. The pumping station operators were keeping constant watch over the calculating machines that computed the ever-changing resistance of the rock, the pressure and expenditure — of water, the depth of the shaft and the expulsion of solid matter. Darr Veter thought that though the joyful picture of sun-bathed forests did not suit his mood at that moment, the concentrated activity of the work at the pumps might suit him and he switched off Siberia House. Immediately the call signal rang out and the Registrar of Vacancies appeared on the screen.