“It’s too simple,” he kept pointing out. “Someone would have ‘thought of it long ago if that’s all there was to it.” Barlennan would simply point astern, where the canoe now followed gaily at the end of a rope, laden with a good half of their food. The mate could not shake his head after the fashion of an old family coachman, looking over the new horseless carriage, but he would certainly have done so if he had possessed a neck.
He brightened up when they finally swung southward, and a new thought struck him.
“Watch it sink as soon as we start to get a little decent weight!” he exclaimed. “It may be all right for the creatures of the Rim, but you need a good solid raft where things are normal.”
“The Flyer says not,” replied Barlennan. “You know as well as I do that the Bree doesn’t float any higher here at the Rim than she does at home. The Flyer says it’s because the methane weighs less too, which sounds as though it might be reasonable.” Dondragmer did not answer; he simply glanced, with an expression equivalent to a complacent smile, at the tough wood sprifag balance and weight that formed one of the ship’s principal navigating instruments. As that weight began to droop, he was sure, something that neither his captain nor the distant Flyer had counted on would happen. He did not know what it would be, but he was certain of the fact.
The canoe, however, continued to float as the weight slowly mounted. It did not, of course, float as high as it would have on Earth, since liquid methane is less than half as dense as water; its “water” line, loaded as it was, ran approximately halfway up from keel to gunwale, so that fully four inches was invisible below the surface. The remaining four inches of freeboard did not diminish as the days went by, and the mate seemed almost disappointed. Perhaps Barlennan and the Flyer were correct after all.
The spring balance was starting to show a barely visible sag from the zero position — it had been made, of course, for use where weight was scores or hundreds of times Earth-normal — when the monotony was broken. Actual weight was about seven Earths. The usual call from Toorey was a little late, and both the captain and mate were beginning to wonder whether all the remaining radios had failed for some reason when it finally arrived. The caller was not Lackland but a meteorologist the iMesldinites had come to know quite well. “Barl,” the weather man opened without preamble, “I don’t know just what sort of storm you consider too bad to be out in — I suppose your standards are pretty high — but tiiere seems to be one coming that I certainly wouldn’t want to ride out on a forty-foot raft. It’s a tight cyclone, of what I would consider hurricane force even for Mesklin, and on the thousand-mile course I’ve been observing so far it has been violent enough to stir up material from below and leave a track of contrasting color on the sea.”
“That’s enough for me,” Barlennan replied. “How do I dodge it?”
“That’s the catch; I’m not sure. It’s still a long way from your position, and I’m not absolutely sure it will cross your course just when you’re at the wrong point. There are a couple of ordinary cyclones yet to pass you, and they will change your course some and possibly even that of the storm. I’m telling you now because there is a group of fairly large islands about five hundred miles to the southeast, and I thought you might like to head for them. The storm will certainly strike them, but there seem to be a number of good harbors where you could shelter the Bree until it was over.”
“Can I get there in time? If there’s serious doubt about it I’d prefer to ride it out in the open sea rather than be caught near land of any sort.”
“At the rate you’ve been going, there should be plenty of time to get there and scout around for a good harbor.”