The instruments seemed normal enough to Vickers, and even Rodin had little to say about them. There were thermometers, precipitation gauges, and hygrometers, all connected electrically to recorders in the laboratories below. The vane on the tower was similarly connected to record wind direction, and it contained a pivot head to measure velocity. The few other devices were slight variants of standard — to Rodin— equipment; and the meteorologist felt rather let down at the end of the tour. He felt fairly surely that the Heklans, in spite of their efficient world net, were no further advanced in meteorology than any Federation planet; but he decided not to voice the opinion until after checking a fair number of their predictions. He awaited the approaching storm with interest. He glanced occasionally to the southwest while they were at the summit, but the omnipresent haze of Hekla’s dense atmosphere hid the horizon; and no signs of the approaching weather appeared before Marn shepherded the men back to the elevator. The other parts of the station, which the Heklan insisted on showing them, were connected with the maintenance of the place rather than with its primary function. The power plant was on the same level as the hangar; it consisted of six surprisingly small electric generators driven by equally diminutive internal-combustion engines, which, according to Marn, burned the alcohol produced by the gardens on the slopes of the hill. These units powered the elevator, supplied heat and light sufficient for the Heklans’ small needs, and operated the numerous items of electrical equipment.
They spent fully three hours inspecting the station; if Marn had been ordered to tire the men out on nonessential details, he was doing splendidly. Rodin lost interest after leaving the roof. Vickers kept up a good front, but eventually even he had to call a halt for rest. Perhaps his fatigue can be blamed for causing him to forget an issue he had planned to force — the roomfull of electric equipment from which he had been diverted two days before, and which Marn had skipped by accident or design. Vickers did forget it, made his excuses to the Heklan, and was back in the ship before he recalled the matter. By that time he was nearly asleep, settled back in one of the chairs in the ship’s library.
He slept four or five hours. Rodin remained awake for some time, but was asleep when Vickers awoke; by the time both had finished sleeping, eating, and talking over the morning’s events, the sun was well up in the sky. So far the weather appeared normal, though Vickers, who had been around long enough to be used to it, thought the breeze was less strong and the cumulus banner less well developed than usual. Marn’s weather was not jumping the gun, at any rate.
It was not late, either. A few minutes before noon — as nearly as they could judge the time — Rodin detected the first wisps of cirrus, high above. They must have been above the horizon for some time, invisible in the haze. As the men were on the landward — and consequently the leeward — side of the hill, the change in wind direction was not noticeable for some time; but its strength mounted rapidly as the clouds thickened and dropped closer to the hilltop. Rodin, stepping outside the ship for a moment, was taken by surprise and knocked over by a gust that eddied around the rock shoulder. He got to his feet immediately, bracing himself against the metal hull, and looked around. Toward the west, the haze had thickened so that it was now impossible to make out details on the plateau inland. Two or three thousand feet overhead, the scud raced along parallel to the coast. On Earth, under similar circumstances, the cloud layers would have been gray; but the fainter, red light of R Coronae here gave them an indescribably eerie pinkish color. All traces of the sky had by now disappeared. Rodin could actually feel in his ears the change in air pressure as other eddies swirled by him. It was still cold; the frontal surface, of course, had not yet come down to his level.
He returned to the control room, thinking. If Vickers had translated correctly, Marn had forecast a weak front; and this outside weather could already be called violent without stretching facts. Either the Heklan prediction was inaccurate, or Rodin would have to revise his ideas of what constituted a violent storm. In three months of residence, Vickers had noticed nothing extraordinary about the weather; and it seemed probable that if Heklan atmospheric phenomena were built to a different scale, the fact would have become apparent in that time. Rodin, thinking the matter over, adopted his usual course of withholding an opinion.
The wind increased, and as the clouds thickened the pinkish light faded into total darkness. Rain began to beat against the metal hull, and the light from the control room window penetrated only a few feet into the murk. The clouds had reached the level of the hilltop. Rodin cautiously opened the outer air lock door again; fortunately it was power-operated, or he would have been unable to close it. Several times the ship shuddered from end to end under the blast. Vickers charged the anchoring fields along the keel after the first tremor, but evidently the rock itself was quivering; an occasional vibration could still be felt during the heaviest gusts of wind. There would be more shattered rock on the terraces when the weather cleared.
The time passed slowly. Rodin kept watching the clock, trying to figure the time of Heklan day on the twenty-four-hour dial in order to keep check on Marn’s prediction. Vickers read and thought, while the storm reached and passed its height. Twice the men were disturbed by an odd, crackling sound, and looked up to see ghostly fingers of fire crawling about the transparent ports. The meteorologist blinked at the sight; he was accustomed to electrical activity in storms with strong vertical development, but to get it with strictly horizontal winds somewhat surprised him. He wondered what velocity the wind must have reached to ionize the raindrops. Vickers felt thankful for the metallic construction of the ship.
Slowly the shuddering diminished, the howling of the wind died, and the dense fog grew once more pinkly luminous. The men ventured outside again, finding that the wind was still strong, but no longer savage. The fog was thinning, and the wind, true to prediction, was blowing from inland, bringing even to this height odors from the vast plains and hills of the great continent.
Rodin stood looking, as the view cleared, at the reappearing sun and the vaguely visible landscape, sniffing the odd smells, and gradually acquiring a puzzled expression. Vickers noted it, and started to ask the nature of the trouble; but he changed his mind, knowing that he was unlikely to get an answer, and went into the ship instead. He found himself shivering, as usual on Hekla, so he picked up the jacket he had discarded after the morning’s inspection tour. Attired in this, he went outside again.
Rodin was waiting for him, the expression of puzzlement still on his face. He caught sight of Vickers, and beckoned to him.