Islands of Space - John W. Campbell (pdf to ebook reader TXT) 📗

“Wade, get the boy a rock to hold him down. Better tie it around his neck so he won’t forget it and fly off into space again. It’s a nuisance locating so small an object in space and I promised his father I’d bring the body back if there was anything left of it.” He released Morey as Wade handed him a large stone.

A few minutes later, he returned with a new adjustment dial and repaired Morey’s apparatus. The strain was released when he turned it, and Morey parted with the rock with relief.

Morey grunted in relief, and looked at the offending pack.

“You know, that being stuck with a sky-bound gadget that you can’t turn off is the nastiest combination of feeling stupid, helpless, comical, silly and scared I’ve hit yet. It now⁠—somewhat late⁠—occurs to me that this is powered with a standard power coil, straight off the production line, and that it has a standard overload cutout for protection of associated equipment. I want to install an emergency cutoff switch, in case a knob, or something else, goes sour. But I want to have the emergency overload where I can decide whether or not an emergency overload is to be accepted. I’d feel a sight more than silly if that overload relay popped while I was a couple thousand feet up.

“Trouble with all this new stuff of ours is that we simply haven’t had time to find out all the ‘I never thought of that’ things that can go wrong. If the grid resistor on that oscillator went out, for instance, what would it do?”

Arcot cocked an eye at the power pack, visualizing the circuits. “Full blast, straight up, and no control. But modern printed resistors don’t fail.”

“That’s what it says in all the books.” Wade nodded wisely. “And you should see the stock of replacement units every electronics shop stocks for purposes of replacing infallible units, too. You’ve got a point, my friend.”

“I can see four ways we can change these things to fail-safe operation, if we add Morey’s emergency cutoff switch. If it did go on-full then, you could use intermittent operation and get down,” Arcot acknowledged.

“Anybody know what silly fail-unsafe tricks we overlooked in the Ancient Mariner?” Fuller asked.

“That,” said Wade with a grimace, “is a silly question. The ‘I didn’t think of that’ type of failure occurs because I didn’t think of that, and the reason I didn’t think of it is because it never occurred to me. If we’d been able to think of ’em, we would have. We’ll probably get stuck with a few more yet, before we get back. But at least we can clean up a few bugs in these things now.”

“Forget it for now, Wade, and get that chow on,” suggested Fuller. He was lying on his back, clad only in a pair of short trunks, completely relaxed and enjoying life. “We can do that when it’s dark here.”

“Fuller has the right idea,” said Morey, looking at Fuller with a judicious eye. “I think I’ll follow his example.”

“Which makes three in favor and one on the way,” said Arcot, as he came out of the ship and sank down on the soft sand of the beach.

They lay around for a while after lunch, and then decided to swim in the cool waters of the lake. One of them was to stand guard while the others went in swimming. Standing guard consisted of lying on his back on the soft sand, and staring up at the delightful contrast of lush green foliage and deep blue sky.

It was several hours before they gathered up their things and returned to the ship. They felt more rested than they had before their exercise. They had not been tired before, merely restless, and the physical exercise had made them far more comfortable.

They gathered again in the control room. All the apparatus had been taken in; the tanks were filled, and the compressed oxygen replenished. They closed the airlock and were ready to start again.

As they lifted into the air, Arcot looked at the lake that was shrinking below them. “Nice place for a picnic; we’ll have to remember that place. It isn’t more than twenty million light years from home.”

“Yes,” agreed Morey, “it is handy. But suppose we find out where home is first; let’s go find the local inhabitants.”

“Excellent idea. Which way do we go to look?” Wade asked.

“This lake must have an outlet to the sea,” Morey answered. “I suggest we follow it. Most rivers of any size have a port near the mouth, and a port usually means a city.”

“Let’s go,” said Arcot, swinging the shining ship about and heading smoothly down along the line of the little stream that had its beginning at the lake. They moved on across the mountains and over the green foothills until they came to a broad, rolling plain.

“I wonder if this planet is inhabited,” Arcot mused. “None of this land seems to be cultivated.”

Morey had been scanning the horizon with a pair of powerful binoculars. “No, the land isn’t cultivated, but take a look over there⁠—see that range of little hills over to the right? Take a look.” He handed the binoculars to Arcot.

Arcot looked long and quietly. At last he lowered the binoculars and handed them to Wade, who sat next to him.

“It looks like the ruins of a city,” Arcot said. “Not the ruins that a storm would make, but the ruins that high explosives would make. I’d say there had been a war and the people who once lived here had been driven off.”

“So would I,” rejoined Morey. “I wonder if we could find the conquerors?”

“Maybe⁠—unless it was mutual annihilation!”

They rose a bit higher and raised their speed to a thousand miles an hour. On and on they flew, high above the gently rolling plain, mile after mile. The little brooklet became a great river, and the river kept growing more and more. Ahead of them was