Dard discovered that he had to drink the same warm salty stuff that had been given to him on his first awakening. And it satisfied him completely. But he only took one .experimental drag before he demanded:
“I heard about Lui. How many others?”
Tas Kordov wiped his mouth with the back of his square hand.
“That we can not tell. We dare not investigate the boxes too closely until a landing has been made. Yes; all of us want an answer to that question, young man. How many–? We can hope that most came through. I propose to open two more from the crews’ quarters—there are men in them whose skills we need. But—for the rest-their slumbers must continue until we have the new world to offer them. And that too,” he waved at the visa-screen,” presents problems. We have found the proper sort of sun. But remember Sol had nine planets, on only one of which mankind could live at ease: Here are three planets—perhaps a Mars, a Venus, a Mercury, and no Terra. Which one do you think we should try, Sim ?”
The pilot drank before he replied. “Judging by the charted orbits, I’ll settle for the middle one. It’s closer to Sol II than Terra was to Sol I, hut it has the nearest approach to a Terran orbit.”
“I don’t knew anything about astronomy,” Dard ventured. “You expect this sun to produce an earth-type planet because it is a ‘yellow’ one, but if one of those three worlds is another Terra—what about intelligent life on it? Couldn’t the same general conditions have produced the same type of dominant life form?”
Kordov leaned forward, disturbing the precarious balance of his swinging seat.
“Intelligent life—maybe. Humanoid of Man—only perhaps. If on one planet the primate is the ruling form, on another it may be the insect or the carnivora.”
“Don’t forget this!” Kimber held up one hand and flexed its fingers in front of the screen. “Man’s hand helped to make him the ruling form. Suppose you had only—say, a cat’s paw. Even if intelligence went with it, and I defy anyone to tell me that a cat is not an intelligent creature; its brains may work in a different pattern, perhaps, but no one who has lived with one can deny that it can alter its environment to suit its convenience, in spite of the general stupidity of the human beings that it must deal with and through. But if we had been born with paws instead of hands—no matter what super brains we had, could we have produced tools, or other artifacts? Primates on Terra had hands. And they used them to pull themselves up to a material civilization, just as they used monkey chatter and worse than monkey manners to break up what they themselves had created. No, if we had not possessed hands we would have achieved nothing.”
“Very well,” Kordov returned, “I grant you the advantage of hands. But I still say that some ruling species other than primates might well have developed under slightly different conditions. All history, both man-made and physical, is conditioned by ‘ifs’. Suppose your super cats have learned to use their paws and are awaiting us. But this is romancing,” he laughed. “Let us hope that what lies there is a world upon which intelligent life has never come into existence at all. If we are lucky—“
Kimber scowled at the screen. “Luck has ridden on our jets all the way. Sometimes I wonder if we have been a little too lucky and there’s a rather nasty pay-off waiting for us right at the end of this voyage. But we can at least choose our landing place and I intend to set us down as far from any signs of civilization—if there is a civilization—as I can. Say in a desert or—“
“We shall leave the selection of the spot to you, Sim. And now, Dard, if you have finished your meal, you will please come with me. There is work to be done.”
Dard’s attempt to get to his feet unbalanced him and he would have fallen had it not been for the First Scientist.
“These cabins have some gravity,” Kordov explained. “But not as much as we knew on Terra. Hold on and move slowly until you learn how to keep your feet.”
Dard did as he advised, clutching at the chairs and anything within reach until he came to the round opening of the door. Beyond that was a much smaller cabin with two built-in bunks and a series of supply cupboards.
“This is pilot’s quarters during an interplanetary run.” Kordov crossed to the center of the room where a well-shaped opening gave access to the ship below. “Come on down—“
Dard gingerly descended the steep stair, coming into the section where he had been stored away for the cold sleep. And Kordov was going into that very cabin. The three boxes on the far rack were open. On the other rack the coffins were solidly white as if they had been carved from virgin snow.
Kordov pressed a button and the topmost box came down to the floor. He freed it from the arms which had lowered it and trundled his prize to the door with Dard’s help. Together they brought the coffin into a second chamber which was a miniature laboratory. Kordov went down on his knees to read the dials. After a minute inspection he sighed with relief.
“It is well. Now we shall open—“
The lid resisted as if ages of time had applied a stiff glue.
But under continued pressure it gave at last with a faint swish of air. Crisp cold curled up about them, bringing with it chemical scents. The First Scientist examined the stiff body in the exposed hollow.
“Yes, yes! Now we must help him to live again. First—on the cot there—“
Dard helped lift the man onto the cot in the middle of the room. Under direction he rubbed the icy flesh with oils from a bottle Kordov thrust upon him, watching the First Scientist inject various fluids over the heart and in scattered veins. Warmth was coming back into the body as they worked. And when the man had fully roused, been fed, and had fallen into the sudden second sleep, Dard aided in dressing him and helped transport the body up to the control cabin to be laid out on the accelerator mat.
“Who—oh, Cully!” Kimber identified the newly revived crewman. “That’s good. Who else are you going to bring around?”
Kordov, puffing a little, took a moment to consider. “We have Santee, Rogan, and Macley there.”
“The ship’s not Santee’s sort of job, and Cully’s our engineer. Wait a minute—Rogan! He’s had space training—as a tel-visor expert. We’ll need him—“
“Rogan it shall be then. But first we shall take a rest. We shall not need a tel-visor expert yet awhile, I believe?”
Kimber glanced at the timepiece set in the control board.
“Not for about five hours at least. And maybe eight—if you want to be lazy.”
“I am lazy when laziness is of advantage. Much of the troubles from which we have fled have been born of too much rushing about trying to keep busy. There is a time for working as hard as a man can work, yes. But there must also be hours to sit in the sun and think long thoughts and do nothing at all. Too much rushing wears out the body—and maybe also the mind. We must make haste slowly if we would make it at all!”
Whether it was some lingering effect of the cold sleep they could not decide, but they all found themselves dropping off into sudden naps. Kordov believed that the condition would pass, but Kimber was uneasy as they approached the chosen planet and demanded a stimulant from the First Scientist.
“I want to be awake now,” Dard caught a scrap of conversation as he came back from a rest on one of the bunks in the other cabin. “To go off in a dream just when I take the ship into atmosphere—that’s not possible. We aren’t out of the woods yet—not by a long margin. Cully could take the controls in a pinch, so could Rogan, when you get him out of cold storage. But neither are trained pilots, and landing on unknown terrain is no job for a beginner!”
“Very well, Sim. You shall have your pill in plenty of time. But now you are to go in, lie down, and relax, not fight sleep. I promise that I shall rouse you in plenty of time. And meanwhile Cully will take your seat and watch the course—“
The tall thin engineer, who had said very little since his awakening, only nodded as he folded with loose-limbed ease into Kimber’s reluctantly vacated place. He made some small adjustment on the control board and dropped his head back on the chair rest to watch the screen.