After an awed pause, there came a storm of cheers. Quelf let it continue a few moments, then called for quiet.
“But that’s only part of the demonstration we have for you!” she declared. “In addition to the power circuit, we also have a message link, and in a moment you’ll get the chance to inspect it for yourselves, and even to send a signal over it, if you have someone at its far end you’d like to get in touch with. The far end, in fact, is half this continent away, at Drupit! And from Drupit, on receipt of a go signal, one of the people who worked on the northernmost stretch of the message link will tell us the very latest news, without repeaters! Watch for it on the display behind me. Are we ready? Yes? Albumarak!”
Again she closed the circuit, this time using a smaller and finer linkup. There was a pause. It lasted so long, a few people voiced the fear that something had gone wrong.
Something had, but not at Fregwil nor at Drupit.
At long last the display began to show the expected symbols, and some of the onlookers recited them aloud:
“METEORITE BRINGS DOWN PILOTED SPACECRAFT—BELIEVED CRASHED IN CENTRAL UPLANDS—RESCUE SEARCH UNDER WAY!”
Before the last word had come clear, someone giggled, and within moments the crowd was caught up in gusts of mocking merriment. Even Quelf surrendered her dignity for long enough to utter a few sympathetic chuckles.
“You’re not laughing,” Presthin murmured to Albumarak.
“Nor are you,” she answered just as softly.
“No. I’ve been in the uplands at this season. It’s bad for the health. And if nothing else, that flier must be brave. Foolhardy and misguided, maybe. Nonetheless—!”
“I know exactly what you mean. But I don’t suppose there’s anything that we can do.”
“No. Not until he’s spotted, anyway. At least they’ve stopped laughing; now they’re cheering again. Quelf’s beckoning. You’d better go and pretend you’re as pleased as she is, hadn’t you?”
III
The meteorite might well not have massed more than one of Karg’s own pads or claws, but the fury of its passage smashed air into blazing plasma. Its shock-wave ripped half the gas-globes asunder, twisted and buffeted the cylinder worse than a storm at sea, punished Karg even through its tough protective walls with a hammer-slam of ultrasonic boom. Gasping, he wished indeed he had a branch to cling to, for the conviction that overcame his mind was primitive and brutal: I’m going to die!
Spinning, he grew dizzy, and it was a long while before an all-important fact began to register. He was only spinning. The cylinder was not tumbling end over end. So a good many of the gas-globes must be intact, though he had no way of telling how many; the monitors which should have been automatically issuing reports to him, as well as to mission control and its outstations scattered across one continent and three oceans, were uttering nonsense.
Was he too low to activate the musculator pumps intended for maneuvering in space? They incorporated a reflex designed to correct just such an axial rotation, but if the external pressure were too high … Giddiness was making it hard to think. He decided to try, and trust to luck.
And the system answered: reluctantly, yet as designed.
The cylinder steadied. But beneath the hauq on which he lay were bladders containing many score times his body-mass of reactive chemicals. If they sprang a leak, his fate would be written on the sky in patterns vaster and brighter than any meteor-streak. After establishing that all fuel-pressures were in the normal range, he relaxed a fraction, then almost relapsed into panic as he realized he could not tell whether he was floating or falling. Sealed in the cylinder, he was deprived of normal weather-sense, and the viewports were blinded by dense cloud. Suppose he was entering a storm! He could envisage much too clearly what a lightning-strike might do to the remaining gas-globes.
If only there were some way of jettisoning his explosive fuel…! The giant storage bladders were programmed to empty themselves, more or less according to the density of air in which the driver fired, and then when safe in vacuum expel whatever of their contents might remain. After that, they were to fold tight along the axis of the cylinder, so as not to unbalance it, and await the high temperature of reentry, whereupon they would convert into vast scoops and planes capable of resisting heat that could melt rock, and bring the cylinder to a gentle touchdown.