“I’m not sure.” Lackland frowned in concentration, and
Rosten brightened a trifle. “There was some reference a long time ago to his staying under water — excuse me, under methane — for quite a while, and swimming considerable distances. You remember those river-dwellers must have moved the Bree by doing just that. If it’s the equivalent of holding breath or a storage system such as our whales use, it won’t do us any good; but if he can actually get a fair part of the hydrogen he needs from what’s in solution in Mesklin’s rivers and seas, there might be some hope.” Rosten thought for a moment longer.
“All right. Get your little friend on the radio and find out all he knows himself about this ability of his. Rick, look up or find out somehow the solubility of hydrogen in methane at eight atmospheres pressure and temperatures between minus one forty-five and one eighty-five Centigrade. Dave, put that slide rule back in your pocket and get to a calculator; get as precise a value of the hydrogen density on that clifftop as physics, chemistry, math, and the gods of good weather men will let you. Incidentally, didn’t you say there was a drop of as much as three atmospheres in the center of some of those tropical hurricanes? Charlie, find out from Barlennan whether and how much he and his men felt that. Let’s go.” The conference broke up, its members scattering to their various tasks. Rosten remained in the screen room with Lackland, listening to his conversation with the Mesklinite far below.
Barlennan agreed that he could swim below the surface for long periods without trouble; but he had no idea how he did it. He did not breathe anyway, and did not experience any feeling comparable to the human sense of strangulation when he submerged. If he stayed too long and was too active the effect was rather similar to sleepiness, as nearly as he could describe it; if he actually lost consciousness, however, it stopped there; he could be pulled out and revived as much later as anyone cared as long as he didn’t starve in the meantime. Evidently there was enough hydrogen in solution in Mesklin’s seas to keep him alive, but not for normal activity. Rosten brightened visibly.
“There is no discomfort of the sort you suggest in the middle of the worst storms I have ever experienced,” the captain went on. “Certainly no one was too weak to hold on during that one which cast us on the island of the gliders — though we were in its center for only two or three minutes, of course. What is your trouble? I do not understand what all these questions are leading to.” Lackland looked to his chief for permission, and received a silent nod of affirmation.
“We have found that the air on top of this cliff, where our rocket is standing, is very much thinner than at the bottom. We doubt seriously that it will be dense enough to keep you and your people going.”
“But that is only three hundred feet; why should it change that much in such a short distance?”
“It’s that gravity of yours; I’m afraid it would take too long to explain why, but on any world the air gets thinner as you go higher, and the more the gravity the faster that change. On your world the conditions are a trifle extreme.”
“But where is the air at what you would call normal for this world?”
“We assume at sea level; all our measures are usually made from that reference.”