New Writings in SF 4 - [Anthology] Read online

  By nightfall the job was done. The mould, that for a reasonable-sized, if unorthodox, craft for two people, was complete. Blick solidly cursed the loss of light which robbed him of the opportunity of proceeding to the next stage of his plan, but with no power to supply artificial lighting, the cessation of outside work was unavoidable. He then fashioned two crude candles from wax and retired to the chemical laboratory, where he spent several hours carefully weighing and mixing chemicals. If he slept at all, he must have slept briefly at his bench, for Martha had the cabin to herself, and, when she awoke at first light, Blick was already at work out on the rafts.

  He had stripped a lot of wiring out of the cable channels and was engaged in extensive alterations to the control circuitry, looping and re-routing conductors in a fashion which proclaimed the immediate and extremely temporary nature of the modifications. She went and stood by him for a while, but realizing she could not hope to be useful in a scheme in which even Blick was extemporizing, she went back to the cabin and drew him a glass of water and took it to him.

  Blick acknowledged her action with a brief nod, and carried on without stopping, working his way down the cable channels past each column in turn, cutting and joining wires at a speed which showed his complete familiarity with even minor details of the layout of the installation. He finished, ultimately, with a pair of heavy wires long enough to reach the boat mould, one of which wires he joined to the outer ends of the fine wires embedded in the mould of the hull.

  “Phase two completed,” he said.

  “Now tell me what you’re going to do ?” she asked.

  “Electroforming,” said Blick. “Heavy electroplating, if you like. We’re going to chemically silver the inside of this wax boat-form to make it electrically conductive, then fill it with slightly acid copper sulphate solution and electroplate a sufficiently thick layer of copper out of the solution to make a boat.”

  She grasped his arm. “Can you really do that, Blick?”

  He shrugged. “With luck. Our difficulty is in trying to make something of this size and under such extremely crude conditions. And we’ve only got one chance!”

  She was still worried. “But, Blick, you need electric current for electroplating. We don’t have any current. The power’s all off.”

  Blick looked at her sagely. From behind his fond eyes a touch of his patient genius looked also. “I must confess that had me worried too. We’ve no incoming power and no batteries, and on the face of it, the whole project was stillborn. Had I been alone, I think I might have left it right there, and just laid right down to die. But, oh God—not you! Here’s an indication of how you inspire me, Martha—I cracked the problem, and in a way you won’t find in any of the textbooks.”

  “Go on,” she said, watching his face intently. The relief on his brow now that he had a definite plan of action was a wonderful thing to see.

  “There’s a way of making an ion-exchange column act like a battery—not a very good one, I’ll admit, but there’s plenty of columns to do the job. I’ve modified the circuits to give us the sort of potential and current we need, and we’ve got a good supply of both acid and copper concentrate in the header tanks. By the alternate running of these columns, reversing polarity where necessary, we shall just about have the current we need to do the job. I’ll guarantee this’ll be the first boat ever to be electro-formed by power from ion-exchange columns—and, come to think of it, it’ll probably be the first electro-formed boat, anyway. The whole idea is too damned ridiculous for words ... !” For a short instant his humour became dominant.

  “I love to see you smile, Blick,” she said. “You should do it more often.”

  “Can’t,” said Blick. “Too many sorrows and frustrations, and they’re all named Martha.”

  “Don’t say that, Blick. You make me regret I ever met you.”

  “Then don’t! Every man needs one consuming passion in his life to force him to know himself, to drive him to explore the uttermost antipodes of feeling and to lift him a little out of the ordinary. Some choose money, some art; some choose religion, or martyrdom even. I chose you, and I’m damned if I’d swap my passion for any of those lesser substitutes.”

  “I suppose it never occurred to you that I’m a very ordinary person really? Not worth all that at all.”

  “No,” said Blick, “because for me it isn’t true.” He looked at her, and his eyes were full of adoration. “My God, there’s no phrase to describe the impact you have on me! Words alone can never tell how much I love.”

  He turned to go, but on a sudden impulse she called him back.

  “Blick! Darling, in case we don’t get out of this there’s something that I have on my conscience and I’d like to say it now.”

  “You don’t need to,” said Blick. “I think I already know it.”

  “Let me say it, anyway. You see, Blick, you’re so naive and wonderful you shouldn’t be allowed out on your own. You think that love is something made in Heaven, or wherever. It isn’t. When all this started between us it was because I made a deliberate play for you, built up that love in you, teased and withdrew until you were so involved emotionally that you had no option but to follow. I did that to you, Blick, and I did it not for love but because I was curious, because I was hurt and because I needed the type of admiration and depth of affection which your sensitivity seemed able to provide. I was using you as a means of salvaging my self-respect, and to avenge myself for the hurt that life had given me.”

  “Go on,” said Blick.

  “I never intended to become much involved myself, Blick, because you didn’t have the freedom to give me all the things I lost when my own marriage was shattered. Yet you were that receptive I was sorely tempted to use you even as a means for stealing back from life all that life had stolen from me.”

  “But you did become involved?”

  “Yes. I either misjudged myself or I underestimated your damned constancy. I became involved myself, and for that reason, I couldn’t do to your marriage what somebody else had done to mine. But I still hurt you. I’d no idea you’d get into it so deeply and for so long. But the bitchy part is this—I’ve never allowed you to forget. I created that love in you, and, ever since, I’ve fed it, always leaving one hint of promise never to be fulfilled. It made me feel ... somebody ... to have that kind of devotion. I needed your love, Blick, and I still do. But can you forgive me for what it’s cost you?”

  “It’s not a question of forgiving,” said Blick very gently. “You’ve given me some of the best and most of the blackest hours of my life, but I wouldn’t have missed one of those hours for anything. You see, it’s in me to love that deeply, and only someone as hurt and human and as lost and desirable as you could satisfy that need. And, oh God ... I’ve loved you as nobody ever loved anyone before!”

  He walked deliberately away to the chemical laboratory, where the silvering reagents he had prepared during the night stood ready for use. She stood for a long time engaged in silent mental conflict, looking at the boat mould and then at the sweet waters of the floating garden, and finally in the far direction of the Base on Lamedah which was synonymous for her with the influence of the worlds outside. Then she picked up one of Blick’s improvised tools he had used for working the wax and inscribed something on the mould wall on the side where it was not too easily seen.

  * * * *

  The critical stages were twofold: first, the silvering of the wax to render it conductive; and, secondly, the first deposit of copper on the only molecules-thick layer of silver without disrupting the silver, since any disruption would have meant a fatal flaw in the subsequent deposit and a useless boat. Knowing too well what was at stake, Blick applied three successive layers of silver to the inside of the mould before he was satisfied, carefully recleaning some areas before repeating the operation. Fortunately, the first deposit of copper, from a low-acid solution, took without fault, and the inside of the mould assumed the uniform and beautiful salmon-pink coloration of freshly
deposited copper.

  Then the work began in earnest. Since Blick was using pieces of lead as anodes and the only source of copper metal was that contained in the copper solution, it was necessary to arrange an influx of new liquor from the header tank. He arranged a constant slow feed through a pipe, and the excess liquid in the mould was allowed to discharge itself over the top edge and drain away through the decking.

  To enable the speed of copper plating to be increased without detriment to the quality of the deposited metal, Martha was stationed with a length of plastic pipe as a paddle to keep the solution in motion, while Blick busied himself with his columns, controlling the flow of concentrate and regenerant by manually operating the valves, which necessitated climbing the columns individually. By nightfall, Martha was almost dropping from exhaustion, and Blick made her go and rest. He himself carried on far into the night, relying on memory when sight was of no avail, and in the morning she found him asleep and exhausted on the decking.

  The day following was a trial for both of them, for they were now in no condition to expend the energy which the job required.

  Martha paddled the mould listlessly, and Blick continued to climb his columns, but more slowly and less surely than before. The thickness of deposit so far achieved was difficult to gauge, but they knew that whatever they achieved by nightfall would have to suffice. They would be in no condition to continue for another day.

  And with the coming of dusk, Blick fell from a column. He did not hurt himself severely, but his foot and ankle swelled to a point where he could not fit his shoe, and made further climbing impossible. Martha volunteered to carry on, but he refused to let her take the risk.

  Under his direction, she stopped the solution flowing to the mould and syphoned the liquid from it. She then part-filled the mould with water and Blick added concentrated sulphuric acid until the acid liquor was hot enough to melt away the wax of the mould, which dropped obligingly away through the decking. Then, leaving the slight flow of the little remaining water to rinse the acid from inside the boat, they lay down together in the cabin, too exhausted to do more than lightly press hand to hand in the hungry darkness.

  * * * *

  In the morning, the result of their labours appeared amazing. The boat shone silver and brilliant on the decking, its exterior mirror-like from the burnishing that Blick had given the mould, the silver coating itself protected from tarnish by the miniscule film of wax that still clung to the surface. Inside, curiously, the bare copper had tarnished only slightly to a uniform and perfect gold. Under other circumstances they would have been delighted with such a rare craft, but Blick knew how perilously thin and brittle was the unorthodox hull, and his sense of unease communicated itself to Martha, cruelly sapping her last hopes for survival.

  Nevertheless, Blick proceeded with the launching. This he accomplished with the hoists used for positioning the pump pickup tubes, but using the hand-winching mechanism in lieu of the power drive. A crude wire sling supported the vessel as it was inched up and over the rail into the water. Both held their breaths very tightly as the craft settled between floating boulders, and were grateful when it rode between high and undamaged. Blick threw a mattress into the bottom to distribute his weight, then entered cautiously. Miraculously the thin shell of the craft held true, so he beckoned Martha down also, and still the precious hull did not crack or buckle.

  Martha held the boat against the pressure of the drift while Blick loaded the equipment he wished to take: two small mixed-bed resin columns from the lab to ensure their supply of drinking water, two cushions, some black plastic sheeting, a few glass beakers, two bottles of chemicals and a stick.

  “This is it, Martha!” he told her. “You know just how slight our chances are.”

  She nodded but did not speak. Instead, she grasped his hand and pulled him into the boat. She continued holding his hand until it was necessary for him to fend the boat away from the rafts and push it farther out into the rocky drift.

  As Blick had predicted, the direction of the drift had now swung back to almost due north, and followed the line of the railway sufficiently closely that in daylight they were able to keep it in view. From the incidence of the stations which they passed, Blick estimated their speed at about two kilometres per hour at the start, although their speed was obviously increasing slightly and their direction would gain a westerly component as they grew nearer to Lamedah. At some point they would be swept back across the route of the railway and become part of the great surge that passed westward into equatorial waters. Blick’s one hope was that they would drift near enough to Lamedah or one of its outposts to be able to attract help. If not, they would die, anyway. There was nothing else they could do.

  The most fantastic characteristic of the voyage was the complete sense of stillness and lack of movement. The ever featureless orange sky offered no points of reference, and they themselves had become part of the measureless tide and moved with it in perfectly uniform motion, so that the impression was one of remaining completely static. Only the supports and floats of the railways, sailing wanton and awkward through the brittle panorama, reassured them of their slow movement to potential rescue.

  Occasionally, Blick prepared some water through one of his columns and passed it to Martha. On noticing an unusually sweet taste in some, she enquired what was in it. Blick held up the bottle.

  “Dextrose,” he said. “It’ll help you some. Unfortunately, we’ve precious little of it.”

  “Make sure you share it equally, Blick,” she said. But she noticed that whereas her ration occasionally contained the slight haze of undissolved sugar, his always looked completely clear, despite his reassurances to the contrary.

  The night was a long one. Both slept only for a few wretched hours, then sat and stared at the featureless darkness with tired, unsleeping eyes. After a seeming eternity, the dawn dragged itself across the sky and they were able to see the railway again, but were now too far away to see much detail. Blick had calculated their progress at this point as about fifty kilometres, but the only station which they saw which was sufficiently individual to be identifiable appeared to be Number Thirty-seven, which would mean they had covered over seventy kilometres, about a third of the total distance.

  Heartened, they endured the day, creating a temporary shelter from the occasional sun with the plastic sheeting and stick. But this was their fourteenth day completely without food, and this, added to their previous ten days of rationing, was taking its drastic toll. Martha, especially, was weakening seriously, while Blick’s foot and ankle were still troubling him. The night was welcome only because it marked a period of time synonymous with a certain progress towards their goal. A divergent westerly stream was beginning to move them back towards the railway, and Blick was under no illusions as to what could happen to the craft should the rocky drift carry it against a float or drag it down the length of a station float in the darkness.

  Accordingly, he crouched in the bow with the stick protruding foremost from the boat, poised painfully on his knees, hoping that if they touched some obstacle in the darkness the shock would warn him in time to avert more serious consequences. Shortly, though, he slipped into a state halfway between sleep and delirium, and somehow the stick was lost overboard among the accompanying rocks and was not seen again.

  He awoke in panic to find the sun high and the railway nowhere visible on any quarter. He guessed that they must have passed beneath the railway in the night on a westerly stream and were now hopelessly in open water and out of sight of the installation. So unexpected was this blow to his calculations that he sat staring stupidly at the horizon for what seemed hours, not caring to try to break the news to Martha, who still slept fitfully in the stern. For the first time he began to abandon hope, for he knew the absolutely negative chance of their ever being traced if their drift became merged with the great equatorial streams which circled the planet.

  A curious false-parallax movement of their rocky environment sudden
ly warned him that the drift was breaking and diverging as it met a local surface current, and this decided him to use the last weapon in his pitiful armoury. The second chemical bottle contained a fluorescene derivative, a brilliant fluorescent dye which he had used occasionally to follow the path of a particularly valuable metal stream. Still with the chemist’s ingrained reactions, he scooped a little water from the rocky sea in a beaker and added a minute quantity of the chemical. It satisfactorily developed its full colour with the characteristic yellow-green fluorescence for which he had hoped, indicating the suitable alkalinity of the stream. Then, little by little, he emptied the dye over the side, watching it spread around them in a pool of increasing width, gradually coating their rocky, tumbling neighbours as the new current forced a rearrangement, and staining a brilliant trace away to their left as uncertain swirls carried it out and away in the direction they, too, would have to follow shortly.