Chapter I

Hardwick knew the Survey ship had turned end-for-end, because though there was artificial gravity, it does not affect the semicircular canals of the human ear. He knew he was turning head-over-heels, even though his feet stayed firmly on the floor. It was not a normal sensation, and he felt that queasy, instinctive tightening of the muscles with which one reacts to the abnormal, whether in things seen or felt.

But the reason for turning the ship end-for-end was obvious. It had arrived very near its destination, and was killing its Lawlor-drive momentum. Just as Hardwick was assured that the turning motion was finished, young Barnes--the ship's lowest-ranking commissioned officer--came into the wardroom and beamed at him kindly.

"The ship's not landing, sir," he said gently, like one explaining something to somebody under ten years old. "Our orders are changed. You're to go to ground by boat. This way, sir."

Hardwick shrugged. He was a Senior Officer of the Colonial Survey, and this was a Survey ship, and it had been sent especially to get him from his last and still unfinished job. It was a top-urgency matter. This ship had had no other business for some months except to go after and bring him to Sector Headquarters, down on Canna III which must be somewhere near. But this young officer was patronizing him!

Hardwick rather regretfully recognized that he didn't know how to be impressive. He was not a good salesman of his own importance. He didn't even get the urgent respect due his rank--and when one thought about it, it was amazing that he'd ever reached a high level in the Survey.

Now the young officer waited, brisk and kindly and blandly alert in manner. Hardwick reflected wryly that he could pin young Barnes' ears back easily enough. But he remembered when he'd been a junior Survey ship's officer. Then he'd felt a serene condescension toward all people of whatever rank who did not spend their lives in the cramped, skimped quarters of a Survey patrol-ship. If this young Lieutenant Barnes were fortunate, he'd always feel that way. Hardwick could not begrudge him the cockiness which made the tedium and hardships of the Service seem to him a privilege.

So he quite obediently followed Barnes through the wardroom door. He ducked his head under a ventilation slot and sidled past a standpipe with bristling air-valve handles. It almost closed the way. There was the smell of oil and paint and ozone which all proper Survey ships maintain in their working sections.

"Here, sir," said Barnes paternally. "This way."

He offered his arm for Hardwick to steady himself by. Hardwick ignored it. He stepped over a complex of white-painted pipes. He arrived at an almost clear way to a boat-blister.

"And your luggage, sir," added the young man reassuringly, "will follow you down immediately, sir. With the mail."

Hardwick nodded. He moved toward the blister door. He practically edged past constrictions due to new equipment. The Survey ship had been designed a long time ago, and there were no funds for rebuilding when improved devices came along. So any Survey ship was apt to be cluttered up with afterthoughts in metal.

* * * * *

A speaker from the wall said sharply:

"_Hear this! Hold fast! Gravity going off!_"

Hardwick caught at a nearby pipe, and snatched his hand away again--it was hot--and caught on to another and then put his other hand below. He applied a trifle of pressure. The young officer said kindly:

"Hold fast, sir. The ship's gravity is going off. If I may suggest--"

The gravity did go off. Hardwick grimaced. There'd been a time when he was used to such matters. This time the sudden outward surge of his breath caught him unprepared. His diaphragm contracted as the weight of organs above it ceased to be. He choked for an instant. He was irritated. He said evenly:

"I am not likely to go head-over-heels, lieutenant. I served four years as a junior swot on a ship exactly like this!"

He did not float about. He held onto a pipe in two places, and he applied expert pressure in a strictly professional manner, and his feet remained firmly on the floor. He startled young Barnes by the achievement, which only junior swots think only junior swots know about.

Barnes said, abashed:

"Yes, sir." He held himself firm in the same fashion.

"I even know," said Hardwick crisply, "that the gravity had to be cut off because we're approaching another ship on Lawlor-drive. Our gravity-coils would blow if we got into her field with our drive off, or if her field pressed ours inboard."

Young Barnes looked extremely uncomfortable. Hardwick felt sorry for him. To be chewed--however delicately--for patronizing a senior officer could not be pleasant. So Hardwick added:

"And I also remember that, when I was a junior swot I once tried to tell a Sector Chief how to top off his suit-tanks. So don't let it bother you!"

The young officer was embarrassed. But a Sector Chief was so high in the table of Survey organization that one of his idle thoughts was popularly supposed to be able to crack a junior officer's skull. If Hardwick, as a young officer, had really tried to tell a Sector Chief how to top his suit-tanks.... Why....

"Thank you, sir," said Barnes awkwardly. "I'll try not to be an ass again, sir."

"I suspect," said Hardwick, "that you'll slip occasionally. I did! What the devil's another ship doing out here and why aren't we landing?"

"I wouldn't know, sir," said the young officer respectfully. His manner toward Hardwick was quite changed. "I do know the Skipper came in expecting to land, sir, by the landing-grid, sir. He was told to stand off. He's as much surprised as you are, sir."

The wall-speaker said crisply:

"_Hear this! Gravity returning! Gravity returning!_"

And weight came back. Hardwick was ready for it this time and took it casually. He looked at the speaker and it said nothing more. He nodded to the young man.

"I suppose I'd better get in the boat. No change in that arrangement, anyhow!"

He crawled through the blister door and wormed his way into the landing-boat--designed for a more modern ship, and excessively inconvenient in such an outmoded launching-device. Barnes crawled in after him.

"Excuse me, sir. I'm to take you down."

He dogged the blister door from the inside, closed the boatport and dogged it, and flipped a switch.

"Ready for departure," he said into a microphone.

A dial on the instrument board flicked halfway to zero. It stopped there. Seconds passed. A green light glowed. The young officer said:

"All tight!"

The needle darted a quarter-way farther over, and then began to descend slowly. The blister was being pumped empty of air. Presently another light glowed.

"Ready for launching," said the young officer briskly.

There were clankings. The blister-seal broke, and the two halves of the boat cover drew back. There were stars. To Hardwick they were unfamiliarly arranged, but he could have picked out Seton and the Donis cluster in any case, and half a hundred more markers by taking thought of the position of the planet Canna III, on which Colonial Survey Sector Headquarters for this part of the galaxy were established.

The boat moved gently out of its place and the ship's gravity field ended as abruptly as such fields do.

The Survey ship floated away, as seen from the vision ports of the boat. It apparently increased its drive, because the boat swirled and swayed as changing eddy-currents moved it. The ship grew small and vanished. The boat hung in emptiness, turning slowly. The sun Canna came into view. It was very large for a Sol-type sun, and its rim was almost devoid of the prominences and jet streams of flaming gas that older suns of the type display. But even out at the third orbit it provided 0-1 climate--optimum: equivalent to Earth--for the planet below.

That planet now came swinging into view as the ship's boat continued to turn. It was blue. More than ninety per cent of its surface was water, and much of the solid land was under the northern ice cap. It had been chosen as Sector Headquarters because of its unsuitability for a large population, which might resent the considerable land-area needed for Survey storage and reserve facilities.

Hardwick regarded it thoughtfully. The boat was, of course, roughly five planetary diameters out--the conventional distance to which a ship approached any planet on its own drive. Hardwick could see the ice cap very clearly, and blue sea beyond it and the twilight-line. There was one cyclonic storm just dissipating toward the night-side, and the edge of a similar cloud-system down toward the equator. Hardwick searched for Headquarters. It was on an island at about forty-five degrees latitude, which ought to be near the center of the planet's surface as seen from where the ship's boat floated. But he could not make it out. There was only the one island of any importance and it was not large.

Nothing happened. The boat's rockets remained silent. The young officer sat quietly, looking at the instruments before him. He seemed to be waiting for something to happen.

A needle kicked and stayed just off the pin. It was an external-field indicator. Some field, somewhere, now included the space in which the ship's boat floated.

"Hm-m-m," said Hardwick. "You are waiting for orders?"

"Yes, sir," said the young man. "I'm ordered not to land except under ground instructions, sir. I don't know why."

Hardwick observed detachedly:

"One of the worst wiggings I ever got was in a boat like this. I was waiting for orders and they didn't come. I acted very Service about it: stiff upper lip and all that. But I was getting in serious trouble when it occurred to me that it might be my fault I wasn't getting the orders."

The young officer glanced quickly at an instrument he had previously ignored. Then he said relievedly:

"Not this time, sir. The communicator's turned on, all right."

Hardwick said:

"Do you think they might be calling you without shifting from ship-frequency? They were talking to the ship, you know."

"I'll try, sir."

The young man leaned forward and switched to ship-band adjustment of the communicator. Different wave bands, naturally, were used between a ship and shore, and a ship and its own boats. A booming carrier wave came in instantly. The young officer hastily turned down the volume and words became distinguishable.

"... _What the devil's the matter with you? Acknowledge!_"

The young officer gulped. Hardwick said mildly:

"Since he ranks you, just say 'Sorry, sir.'"

"S-sorry, sir," said Barnes into the microphone.

"_Sorry?_" snapped the voice from the ground. "_I've been calling for five minutes! Your skipper will hear about this! I shall_--"

Hardwick pulled the microphone before him.

"My name is Hardwick," he observed, "I am waiting for instructions to land. My pilot has been listening on boat-frequency, as was proper. You appear to be calling us on an improper channel. Really--"

There was stricken silence. Then babbled apologies from the speaker. Hardwick smiled faintly at young Barnes.

"It's quite all right. Let's forget it now. But will you give my pilot his instructions?"

The voice said strainedly:

"_You're to be brought down by landing-grid, sir. Rocket landings have been ruled non-permitted by the Sector Chief himself, sir. But we are already landing one boat, sir. Senior Officer Werner is being brought in now, sir. His boat is still two diameters out, sir, and it will take us nearly an hour to get him down without extreme discomfort, sir._"

"Then we'll wait," said Hardwick. "Hm-m-m. Call us again before you start hunting us with the landing-beam. My pilot has a rather promising idea. And will you call us on the proper frequency then, please?"

The voice aground said unhappily:

"_Yes, sir. Certainly, sir._"

The carrier-wave hum stopped. Young Barnes said gratefully:

"Thank you, sir! Hell hath no fury like a ranking officer caught in a blunder! He'd have twisted my tail for his mistake, sir, and it could have been bad!" Then he paused. He said uneasily, "But ... beg pardon, sir! I haven't any promising ideas. Not that I know of!"

"You have an hour to develop one," Hardwick told him.

* * * * *

Internally, Hardwick was disturbed. There were few occasions on which even one Senior Officer was called in to Sector Headquarters. Interstellar distances being what they were, and thirty light-speeds being practically the best available, Senior Officers necessarily acted pretty much as independent authorities. To call one man in meant all his other work had to go by the board for a matter of months. But two--And Werner?

Werner was getting to ground first. If there were something serious ashore, Werner would make a great point of arriving first, even if only by hours. A keen sort of person in giving the right impression, he'd risen in the Service faster than Hardwick. That other Lawlor field would have been his ship getting out of the way.

The young officer at his elbow fidgeted.

"Beg pardon, sir. What sort of idea should I develop, sir? I'm not sure I understand--"

"It's rather annoying to have to stay parked in free fall," said Hardwick patiently. "And it's always a good practice to review annoying situations and see if they can be bettered."

Barnes' forehead wrinkled.

"We could land much quicker on rockets, sir. And ... even when the landing-grid reaches out for us, since we've no gravity-coils, they'll have to handle us very cautiously or they'd break our necks!"

Hardwick nodded. Barnes was thinking straight enough, but it takes young officers a long time to think of thinking straight. They have to obey so many orders unquestioningly that they tend to stop doing anything else. Yet at each rise in grade some slight trace of increased capacity to think is required. In order to reach really high rank, an officer has to be capable of thinking which simply isn't possible unless he's kept in practice on the way up.

Young Barnes looked up, startled.

"Look here, sir!" he said, surprised. "If it takes them an hour to let down Senior Officer Werner from two planetary diameters, it'll take much longer to let us down from out here!"

"True," said Hardwick.

"And you don't want to spend three hours descending, sir, after waiting an hour for him!"

"I don't," admitted Hardwick. He could have given orders, of course. But if a junior officer were spurred to the practice of thinking, it might mean that some day he'd be a better senior officer. And Hardwick knew how desperately few men were really adequate for high authority. Anything that could be done to increase the number--

Young Barnes blinked.

"But it doesn't matter to the landing-grid how far out we are!" he said in an astonished voice. "They could lock on to us at ten diameters, or at one! Once they lock the field-focus on us, when they move it they move us!"

Hardwick nodded again.

"So ... so by the time they've got that other boat landed ... why ... I can use rockets and get down to one diameter myself, sir! And they can lock onto us there and let us down a few thousand miles only! So we can get to ground half an hour after the other boat's down instead of four hours from now."

"Just so," agreed Hardwick. "At a cost of a little thought and a little fuel. You do have a promising idea after all, lieutenant. Suppose you carry it out?"

* * * * *

Young Barnes glanced at Hardwick's safety-strap. He threw over the fuel-ready lever and conscientiously waited the conventional few seconds for the first molecules of fuel to be catalyzed cold. Once firing started, they'd be warmed to detonation-readiness in the last few millimeters of the injection-gap.

"Firing, sir," he said respectfully.

There was the curious sound of a rocket blasting in emptiness, when the sound is conveyed only by the rocket-tube's metal. There was the smooth, pushing sensation of acceleration. The tiny ship's boat swung and aimed down at the planet. Lieutenant Barnes leaned forward and punched the ship's computer.

"I hope you'll excuse me, sir," he said awkwardly. "I should have thought that out myself, sir, without prompting. But problems like this don't turn up very often, sir. As a rule it's wisest to follow precedents as if they were orders."

Hardwick said dryly:

"To be sure! But one reason for the existence of junior officers is the fact that some day there will have to be new senior ones."

Barnes considered. Then he said surprisedly:

"I never thought of it that way, sir. Thank you."

He continued to punch the computer keys, frowning. Hardwick relaxed in his seat, held there by the gentle acceleration and the belt. He'd had nothing by which to judge the reason for his summoning to Headquarters. He had very little now. But there was trouble of some sort below. Two senior officers dragged from their own work. Werner, now--Hardwick preferred not to estimate Werner. He disliked the man, and would be biased. But he was able, though definitely on the make. And there was himself. They'd been called to Headquarters where no ship was to be landed by landing-grid, nor any rocket to come to ground. A landing-grid could pluck a ship out of space ten planet-diameters out, and draw it with gentle violence shoreward, and land it lightly as a feather. A landing-grid could take the heaviest, loaded freighter and stop it in orbit and bring it down at eight gravities. But the one below wouldn't land even a tiny Survey ship! And a landing-boat was forbidden to come down on its rockets!

Hardwick arranged those items in his mind. He knew the planet below, of course. When he got his Senior rating he'd spent six months at Headquarters learning procedures and practices proper to his increased authority. There was one inhabitable island, two hundred miles long and possibly forty wide. There was no other usable ground outside the Arctic.

The one occupied island had gigantic sheer cliffs on its windward side, where a great slab of bedrock had split along some submarine fault and tilted upward above the surface. Those cliffs were four thousand feet high, but from them the island sloped very, very gently and very gradually until its leeward shore slipped under the restless sea.

Sector Headquarters had been placed here because it seemed that civilians would not want to colonize so limited a world. But there were civilians, because there was Headquarters. And now every inch of ground was cultivated and there was irrigation and intensive farming and some hydroponic establishments. But Sector Headquarters included a vast reserve area on which a space-fleet might be marshaled in case of need. The overcrowded civilians were bitter because of the great uncultivated area the Survey needed for storage and possible emergency use. Even when Hardwick was here, years back, there was bitterness because the Survey crowded the civilian economy which had been based on it.

Hardwick considered all these items. He came to an uncomfortable conclusion. Presently he looked up. The planet loomed larger. Much larger.

* * * * *

"I think you'd better lose all planetward velocity before we hook on," he observed. "The landing-grid crew might have trouble focusing on us so close if we're moving."

"Yes, sir," said the young officer. "I will, sir."

"There's some sort of merry hell below," said Hardwick wryly. "It looks bad that they won't let a ship come down by grid. It looks worse that they won't let this one land on its rockets." He paused. "I doubt they'll risk lifting us off again."

Young Barnes finished his computations. He looked satisfied. He glanced at the now-gigantic planet below. He deftly adjusted the course of the tiny boat. Then he jerked his head around.

"Excuse me, sir. Did you say we mightn't be able to lift off again?"

"I could almost predict that we won't," said Hardwick.

"Would you ... could you say why, sir?"

"They don't want landings. The trouble is here. If they don't want landings, they won't want launchings. Werner and I were sent for, so presumably we're needed. But apparently there's uneasiness about even our landing. Surely they won't send us off again. I suspect--"

The loud-speaker said tinnily:

"_Calling boat from landing-grid! Calling boat from landing-grid!_"

"Come in," said Barnes. But he looked uneasily at Hardwick.

"_Correct your course!_" commanded the voice sharply. "_You are not to land on rockets under any circumstances! This is an order from the Sector Chief himself! Stand off! We will be ready to lock on and land you gently in about fifteen minutes. But meanwhile stand off!_"

"Yes, sir," said young Barnes.

Hardwick reached over and took the microphone.

"Hardwick speaking," he said. "I'd like information. What's the trouble down there that we can't use our rockets?"

"_Rockets are noisy, sir. Even boat-rockets. We have orders to prevent all physical vibration possible, sir. But I am ordered not to give details on a transmitter, sir._"

"I'll sign off," said Hardwick, dryly.

He pushed the microphone away. He deplored his own lack of aggressiveness. Werner, now, would have pulled his rank and insisted on being informed. But Hardwick couldn't help believing that there was a reason for orders that over-ruled his own.

The young officer swung the rocket end-for-end. The sensation of pressure against the back of Hardwick's seat increased.

Minutes later the speaker said:

"_Grid to boat. Prepare for lock-on._"

"Ready, sir," said Barnes.

The small boat shuddered and leaped crazily. It spun. It oscillated violently through seconds-long arcs in emptiness. Very, very gradually, the oscillations died. There was a momentary sensation of the faint tugging of planetary weight, which is somehow subtly different from the feel of artificial gravity. Then the cosmos turned upside down as the boat was drawn very swiftly toward the watery planet below it.

Some minutes later, young Barnes spoke apologetically:

"Beg pardon, sir," he said diffidently. "I must be stupid, sir, but I can't imagine any reason why vibrations or noise should make any difference on a planet. How could it do harm?"

"This is an ocean-planet," said Hardwick. "It might make people drown."

The young officer flushed. He turned his head away. And Hardwick reflected ruefully that the young were always sensitive. But he did not speak again. When they landed in the vast, spidery landing-grid--a vast metal grid-work a full half-mile high--Barnes would find out whether he was right or not.

He did. And Hardwick was right. The people on Canna III were anxious to avoid vibrations because they were afraid of drowning.

Their fears seemed to be rather well-founded.