Four-Day Planet by H. Beam Piper
10
MAYDAY, MAYDAY
Getting a ship's boat berthed inside the ship in the air is trickywork under the best of conditions; the way the wind was blowing bynow, it would have been like trying to thread a needle inside aconcrete mixer. We submerged after the ship and went in underwater.Then we had to wait in the boat until the ship rose above the surfaceand emptied the water out of the boat berth. When that was done andthe boat berth was sealed again, the ship went down seventy fathomsand came to rest on the bottom, and we unsealed the boat and got out.
There was still the job of packing the wax into skins, but that couldwait. Everybody was tired and dirty and hungry. We took turns washingup, three at a time, in the little ship's latrine which, for somereason going back to sailing-ship days on Terra, was called the"head." Finally the whole sixteen of us gathered in the relativelycomfortable wardroom under the after gun turret.
Comfortable, that is, to the extent that everybody could find a placeto sit down, or could move about without tripping over somebody else.There was a big pot of coffee, and everybody had a plate or bowl ofhot food. There's always plenty of hot food to hand on a hunter-ship;no regular meal-times, and everybody eats, as he sleeps, when he hastime. This is the only time when a whole hunter crew gets together,after a monster has been killed and cut up and the ship is resting onthe bottom and nobody has to stand watch.
Everybody was talking about the killing, of course, and the wax we hadin the hold, and counting the money they were going to get for it, atthe new eighty-centisol price.
"Well, I make it about fourteen tons," Ramon Llewellyn, who had beenchecking the wax as it went into the hold, said. He figured mentallyfor a moment, and added, "Call it twenty-two thousand sols." Then hehad to fall back on a pencil and paper to figure shares.
I was surprised to find that he was reckoning shares for both Murelland myself.
"Hey, do we want to let them do that?" I whispered to Murell. "We justcame along for the ride."
"I don't want the money," he said. "These people need every cent theycan get."
So did I, for that matter, and I didn't have salary and expenseaccount from a big company on Terra. However, I hadn't come along inthe expectation of making anything out of it, and a newsman has to becareful about the outside money he picks up. It wouldn't do any harmin the present instance, but as a practice it can lead to all kinds ofthings, like playing favorites, coloring news, killing stories thatshouldn't be killed. We do enough of that as it is, like playing downthe tread-snail business for Bish Ware and the spaceport people, andnever killing anybody except in a "local bar." It's hard to draw aline on that sort of thing.
"We're just guests," I said. "We don't work here."
"The dickens you are," Joe Kivelson contradicted. "Maybe you cameaboard as guests, but you're both part of the crew now. I never saw aprettier shot on a monster than Walt made--took that thing's head offlike a chicken on a chopping block--and he did a swell job of coveringfor the cutting-up. And he couldn't have done that if Murell hadn'thandled the boat the way he did, and that was no easy job."
"Well, let's talk about that when we get to port," I said. "Are wegoing right back, or are we going to try for another monster?"
"I don't know," Joe said. "We could stow the wax, if we didn't get toomuch, but if we stay out, we'll have to wait out the wind and by thenit'll be pretty cold."
"The longer we stay out, the more the cruise'll cost," AbdullahMonnahan, the engineer, said, "and the expenses'll cut into theshares."
"Tell the truth, I'm sort of antsy to get back," Joe Kivelson said. "Iwant to see what's going on in Port Sandor."
"So am I," Murell said. "I want to get some kind of office opened, andget into business. What time will the _Cape Canaveral_ be getting in?I want a big cargo, for the first time."
"Oh, not for four hundred hours, at the least," I said. "Thespaceships always try to miss the early-dark and early-daylightstorms. It's hard to get a big ship down in a high wind."
"That'll be plenty of time, I suppose," Murell said. "There's all thatwax you have stored, and what I can get out of the Co-operative storesfrom crews that reclaim it. But I'm going to have a lot to do."
"Yes," I agreed. "Dodging bullets, for one."
"Oh, I don't expect any trouble," Murell said. "This fellow Ravick'sshot his round."
He was going to say something else, but before he could say it therewas a terrific roar forward. The whole ship bucked like a recoilinggun, throwing everybody into a heap, and heeled over to starboard.There were a lot of yells, particularly from those who had beensplashed with hot coffee, and somebody was shouting something aboutthe magazines.
"The magazines are aft, you dunderhead," Joe Kivelson told him,shoving himself to his feet. "Stay put, everybody; I'll see what itis."
He pulled open the door forward. An instant later, he had slammed itshut and was dogging it fast.
"Hull must be ruptured forward; we're making water. It's spouting upthe hatch from the engine room like a geyser," he said. "Ramon, go seewhat it's like in the boat berth. The rest of you, follow him, andgrab all the food and warm clothing you can. We're going to have toabandon."
He stood by the doorway aft, shoving people through and keeping themfrom jamming up, saying: "Take it easy, now; don't crowd. We'll allget out." There wasn't any panic. A couple of men were in the doorwayof the little galley when I came past, handing out cases of food. Asnothing was coming out at the instant, I kept on, and on the way backto the boat-berth hatch, I pulled down as many parkas and pairs ofoverpants as I could carry, squeezing past Tom, who was collectingfleece-lined hip boots. Each pair was buckled together at the tops; ahunter always does that, even at home ashore.
Ramon had the hatch open, and had opened the top hatch of the boat,below. I threw my double armload of clothing down through it and sliddown after, getting out of the way of the load of boots Tom dumpedahead of him. Joe Kivelson came down last, carrying the ship's log andsome other stuff. A little water was trickling over the edge of thehatch above.
"It's squirting up from below in a dozen places," he said, after he'dsealed the boat. "The whole front of the ship must be blown out."
"Well, now we know what happened to Simon MacGregor's _Claymore_," Isaid, more to myself than to anybody else.
Joe and Hans Cronje, the gunner, were getting a rocket out of thelocker, detaching the harpoon and fitting on an explosive warhead. Hestopped, while he and Cronje were loading it into the after launcher,and nodded at me.
"That's what I think, too," he said. "Everybody grab onto something;we're getting the door open."
I knew what was coming and started hugging a stanchion as though itwere a long-lost sweetheart, and Murell, who didn't but knew enough toimitate those who did, hugged it from the other side. The rocketwhooshed out of the launcher and went off with a deafening bangoutside. For an instant, nothing happened, and I told Murell not tolet go. Then the lock burst in and the water, at seventy fathoms'pressure, hit the boat. Abdullah had gotten the engines on and wasbacking against it. After a little, the pressure equalized and we wentout the broken lock stern first.
We circled and passed over the _Javelin_, and then came back. She waslying in the ooze, a quarter over on her side, and her whole bow wasblown out to port. Joe Kivelson got the square box he had brought downfrom the ship along with the log, fussed a little with it, and thenlaunched it out the disposal port. It was a radio locator. Sometimes alucky ship will get more wax than the holds' capacity; they pack it inskins and anchor it on the bottom, and drop one of those gadgets withit. It would keep on sending a directional signal and the name of theship for a couple of years.
"Do you really think it was sabotage?" Murell was asking me. Blowingup a ship with sixteen men aboard must have seemed sort of extreme tohim. Maybe that wasn't according to Terran business ethics. "Mightn'tit have been a power unit?"
"No. Power units don't blow, and if one did, it would vaporize thewhole ship and a quarter of a cubic mile o
"Ravick?" he asked, rather unnecessarily.
"You know how well he can get along without you and Joe Kivelson, andhere's a chance to get along without both of you together." Everybodyin the boat was listening, so I continued: "How much do you know aboutthis fellow Devis, who strained his back at the last moment?"
"Engine room's where he could have planted something," Joe Kivelsonsaid.
"He was in there by himself for a while, the morning after themeeting," Abdullah Monnahan added.
"And he disappeared between the meeting room and the elevator, duringthe fight," Tom mentioned. "And when he showed up, he hadn't beenmarked up any. I'd have thought he'd have been pretty badlybeaten--unless they knew he was one of their own gang."
"We're going to look Devis up when we get back," somebody saidpleasantly.
"If we get back," Ramon Llewellyn told him. "That's going to take somedoing."
"We have the boat," Hans Cronje said. "It's a little crowded, but wecan make it back to Port Sandor."
"I hope we can," Abe Clifford, the navigator, said. "Shall we take herup, Joe?"
"Yes, see what it's like on top," the skipper replied.
Going up, we passed a monster at about thirty fathoms. It stuck itsneck out and started for us. Monnahan tilted the boat almost verticaland put on everything the engines had, lift and drive parallel. Aninstant later, we broke the surface and shot into the air.
The wind hit the boat as though it had been a ping-pong ball, and itwas several seconds, and bad seconds at that, before Monnahan regainedeven a semblance of control. There was considerable bad language, andseveral of the crew had bloody noses. Monnahan tried to get the boatturned into the wind. A circuit breaker popped, and red lights blazedall over the instrument panel. He eased off and let the wind takeover, and for a while we were flying in front of it like a riflebullet. Gradually, he nosed down and submerged.
"Well, that's that." Joe Kivelson said, when we were back in theunderwater calm again. "We'll have to stay under till the wind's over.Don't anybody move around or breathe any deeper than you have to.We'll have to conserve oxygen."
"Isn't the boat equipped with electrolytic gills?" Murell asked.
"Sure, to supply oxygen for a maximum of six men. We have sixteen inhere."
"How long will our air last, for sixteen of us?" I asked.
"About eight hours."
It would take us fifty to get to Port Sandor, running submerged. Thewind wouldn't even begin to fall in less than twenty.
"We can go south, to the coast of Hermann Reuch's Land," Abe Clifford,the navigator, said. "Let me figure something out."
He dug out a slide rule and a pencil and pad and sat down with hisback to the back of the pilot's seat, under the light. Everybodywatched him in a silence which Joe Kivelson broke suddenly bybellowing:
"Dumont! You light that pipe and I'll feed it to you!"
Old Piet Dumont grabbed the pipe out of his mouth with one hand andpocketed his lighter with the other.
"Gosh, Joe; I guess I just wasn't thinking..." he began.
"Well, give me that pipe." Joe put it in the drawer under the charts."Now you won't have it handy the next time you don't think."
After a while, Abe Clifford looked up. "Ship's position I don't haveexactly; somewhere around East 25 Longitude, South 20 Latitude. Ican't work out our present position at all, except that we'resomewhere around South 30 Latitude. The locator signal is almostexactly north-by-northeast of us. If we keep it dead astern, we'llcome out in Sancerre Bay, on Hermann Reuch's Land. If we make that,we're all right. We'll be in the lee of the Hacksaw Mountains, and wecan surface from time to time to change air, and as soon as the windfalls we can start for home."
Then he and Abdullah and Joe went into a huddle, arguing aboutcruising speed submerged. The results weren't so heartening.
"It looks like a ten-hour trip, submerged," Joe said. "That's twohours too long, and there's no way of getting more oxygen out of thegills than we're getting now. We'll just have to use less. Everybodylie down and breathe as shallowly as possible, and don't do anythingto use energy. I'm going to get on the radio and see what I canraise."
Big chance, I thought. These boat radios were only used forcommunicating with the ship while scouting; they had a strain-everythingrange of about three hundred miles. Hunter-ships don't crowd that closetogether when they're working. Still, there was a chance that somebodyelse might be sitting it out on the bottom within hearing. So Abe tookthe controls and kept the signal from the wreck of the _Javelin_ deadastern, and Joe Kivelson began speaking into the radio:
"Mayday, Mayday, Mayday, Mayday. Captain Kivelson, _Javelin_, calling.My ship was wrecked by an explosion; all hands now in scout boat,proceeding toward Sancerre Bay, on course south-by-southwest from thewreck. Locator signal is being broadcast from the _Javelin_. Otherthan that, we do not know our position. Calling all craft, callingMayday."
He stopped talking. The radio was silent except for an occasionalfrying-fat crackle of static. Then he began over again.
I curled up, trying to keep my feet out of anybody's face and my faceclear of anybody else's feet. Somebody began praying, and somebodyelse told him to belay it, he was wasting oxygen. I tried to go tosleep, which was the only practical thing to do. I must havesucceeded. When I woke again, Joe Kivelson was saying, exasperatedly:
"Mayday, Mayday, Mayday, Mayday..."