THE SWAMP WAS UPSIDE DOWN

BY MURRAY LEINSTER

Illustrated by Freas

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Astounding Science Fiction September 1956.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

I

Hardwick knew the Survey ship had turned end-for-end, because though there was artificial gravity, it does not affect the semicircular canals of the human ear. He knew he was turning head-over-heels, even though his feet stayed firmly on the floor. It was not a normal sensation, and he felt that queasy, instinctive tightening of the muscles with which one reacts to the abnormal, whether in things seen or felt.

But the reason for turning the ship end-for-end was obvious. It had arrived very near its destination, and was killing its Lawlor-drive momentum. Just as Hardwick was assured that the turning motion was finished, young Barnes—the ship's lowest-ranking commissioned officer—came into the wardroom and beamed at him kindly.

"The ship's not landing, sir," he said gently, like one explaining something to somebody under ten years old. "Our orders are changed. You're to go to ground by boat. This way, sir."

Hardwick shrugged. He was a Senior Officer of the Colonial Survey, and this was a Survey ship, and it had been sent especially to get him from his last and still unfinished job. It was a top-urgency matter. This ship had had no other business for some months except to go after and bring him to Sector Headquarters, down on Canna III which must be somewhere near. But this young officer was patronizing him!

Hardwick rather regretfully recognized that he didn't know how to be impressive. He was not a good salesman of his own importance. He didn't even get the urgent respect due his rank—and when one thought about it, it was amazing that he'd ever reached a high level in the Survey.

Now the young officer waited, brisk and kindly and blandly alert in manner. Hardwick reflected wryly that he could pin young Barnes' ears back easily enough. But he remembered when he'd been a junior Survey ship's officer. Then he'd felt a serene condescension toward all people of whatever rank who did not spend their lives in the cramped, skimped quarters of a Survey patrol-ship. If this young Lieutenant Barnes were fortunate, he'd always feel that way. Hardwick could not begrudge him the cockiness which made the tedium and hardships of the Service seem to him a privilege.

So he quite obediently followed Barnes through the wardroom door. He ducked his head under a ventilation slot and sidled past a standpipe with bristling air-valve handles. It almost closed the way. There was the smell of oil and paint and ozone which all proper Survey ships maintain in their working sections.

"Here, sir," said Barnes paternally. "This way."

He offered his arm for Hardwick to steady himself by. Hardwick ignored it. He stepped over a complex of white-painted pipes. He arrived at an almost clear way to a boat-blister.

"And your luggage, sir," added the young man reassuringly, "will follow you down immediately, sir. With the mail."

Hardwick nodded. He moved toward the blister door. He practically edged past constrictions due to new equipment. The Survey ship had been designed a long time ago, and there were no funds for rebuilding when improved devices came along. So any Survey ship was apt to be cluttered up with afterthoughts in metal.

A speaker from the wall said sharply:

"Hear this! Hold fast! Gravity going off!"

Hardwick caught at a nearby pipe, and snatched his hand away again—it was hot—and caught on to another and then put his other hand below. He applied a trifle of pressure. The young officer said kindly:

"Hold fast, sir. The ship's gravity is going off. If I may suggest—"

The gravity did go off. Hardwick grimaced. There'd been a time when he was used to such matters. This time the sudden outward surge of his breath caught him unprepared. His diaphragm contracted as the weight of organs above it ceased to be. He choked for an instant. He was irritated. He said evenly:

"I am not likely to go head-over-heels, lieutenant. I served four years as a junior swot on a ship exactly like this!"

He did not float about. He held onto a pipe in two places, and he applied expert pressure in a strictly professional manner, and his feet remained firmly on the floor. He startled young Barnes by the achievement, which only junior swots think only junior swots know about.

Barnes said, abashed:

"Yes, sir." He held himself firm in the same fashion.

"I even know," said Hardwick crisply, "that the gravity had to be cut off because we're approaching another ship on Lawlor-drive. Our gravity-coils would blow if we got into her field with our drive off, or if her field pressed ours inboard."

Young Barnes looked extremely uncomfortable. Hardwick felt sorry for him. To be chewed—however delicately—for patronizing a senior officer could not be pleasant. So Hardwick added:

"And I also remember that, when I was a junior swot I once tried to tell a Sector Chief how to top off his suit-tanks. So don't let it bother you!"

The young officer was embarrassed. But a Sector Chief was so high in the table of Survey organization that one of his idle thoughts was popularly supposed to be able to crack a junior officer's skull. If Hardwick, as a young officer, had really tried to tell a Sector Chief how to top his suit-tanks.... Why....

"Thank you, sir," said Barnes awkwardly. "I'll try not to be an ass again, sir."

"I suspect," said Hardwick, "that you'll slip occasionally. I did! What the devil's another ship doing out here and why aren't we landing?"

"I wouldn't know, sir," said the young officer respectfully. His manner toward Hardwick was quite changed. "I do know the Skipper came in expecting to land, sir, by the landing-grid, sir. He was told to stand off. He's as much surprised as you are, sir."

The wall-speaker said crisply:

"Hear this! Gravity returning! Gravity returning!"

And weight came back. Hardwick was ready for it this time and took it casually. He looked at the speaker and it said nothing more. He nodded to the young man.

"I suppose I'd better get in the boat. No change in that arrangement, anyhow!"

He crawled through the blister door and wormed his way into the landing-boat—designed for a more modern ship, and excessively inconvenient in such an outmoded launching-device. Barnes crawled in after him.

"Excuse me, sir. I'm to take you down."

He dogged the blister door from the inside, closed the boatport and dogged it, and flipped a switch.

"Ready for departure," he said into a microphone.

A dial on the instrument board flicked halfway to zero. It stopped there. Seconds passed. A green light glowed. The young officer said:

"All tight!"

The needle darted a quarter-way farther over, and then began to descend slowly. The blister was being pumped empty of air. Presently another light glowed.

"Ready for launching," said the young officer briskly.

There were clankings. The blister-seal broke, and the two halves of the boat cover drew back. There were stars. To Hardwick they were unfamiliarly arranged, but he could have picked out Seton and the Donis cluster in any case, and half a hundred more markers by taking thought of the position of the planet Canna III, on which Colonial Survey Sector Headquarters for this part of the galaxy were established.

The boat moved gently out of its place and the ship's gravity field ended as abruptly as such fields do.

The Survey ship floated away, as seen from the vision ports of the boat. It apparently increased its drive, because the boat swirled and swayed as changing eddy-currents moved it. The ship grew small and vanished. The boat hung in emptiness, turning slowly. The sun Canna came into view. It was very large for a Sol-type sun, and its rim was almost devoid of the prominences and jet streams of flaming gas that older suns of the type display. But even out at the third orbit it provided 0-1 climate—optimum: equivalent to Earth—for the planet below.

That planet now came swinging into view as the ship's boat continued to turn. It was blue. More than ninety per cent of its surface was water, and much of the solid land was under the northern ice cap. It had been chosen as Sector Headquarters because of its unsuitability for a large population, which might resent the considerable land-area needed for Survey storage and reserve facilities.

Hardwick regarded it thoughtfully. The boat was, of course, roughly five planetary diameters out—the conventional distance to which a ship approached any planet on its own drive. Hardwick could see the ice cap very clearly, and blue sea beyond it and the twilight-line. There was one cyclonic storm just dissipating toward the night-side, and the edge of a similar cloud-system down toward the equator. Hardwick searched for Headquarters. It was on an island at about forty-five degrees latitude, which ought to be near the center of the planet's surface as seen from where the ship's boat floated. But he could not make it out. There was only the one island of any importance and it was not large.

Nothing happened. The boat's rockets remained silent. The young officer sat quietly, looking at the instruments before him. He seemed to be waiting for something to happen.

A needle kicked and stayed just off the pin. It was an external-field indicator. Some field, somewhere, now included the space in which the ship's boat floated.

"Hm-m-m," said Hardwick. "You are waiting for orders?"

"Yes, sir," said the young man. "I'm ordered not to land except under ground instructions, sir. I don't know why."

Hardwick observed detachedly:

"One of the worst wiggings I ever got was in a boat like this. I was waiting for orders and they didn't come. I acted very Service about it: stiff upper lip and all that. But I was getting in serious trouble when it occurred to me that it might be my fault I wasn't getting the orders."

The young officer glanced quickly at an instrument he had previously ignored. Then he said relievedly:

"Not this time, sir. The communicator's turned on, all right."

Hardwick said:

"Do you think they might be calling you without shifting from ship-frequency? They were talking to the ship, you know."

"I'll try, sir."

The young man leaned forward and switched to ship-band adjustment of the communicator. Different wave bands, naturally, were used between a ship and shore, and a ship and its own boats. A booming carrier wave came in instantly. The young officer hastily turned down the volume and words became distinguishable.

"... What the devil's the matter with you? Acknowledge!"

The young officer gulped. Hardwick said mildly:

"Since he ranks you, just say 'Sorry, sir.'"

"S-sorry, sir," said Barnes into the microphone.

"Sorry?" snapped the voice from the ground. "I've been calling for five minutes! Your skipper will hear about this! I shall—"

Hardwick pulled the microphone before him.

"My name is Hardwick," he observed, "I am waiting for instructions to land. My pilot has been listening on boat-frequency, as was proper. You appear to be calling us on an improper channel. Really—"

There was stricken silence. Then babbled apologies from the speaker. Hardwick smiled faintly at young Barnes.

"It's quite all right. Let's forget it now. But will you give my pilot his instructions?"

The voice said strainedly:

"You're to be brought down by landing-grid, sir. Rocket landings have been ruled non-permitted by the Sector Chief himself, sir. But we are already landing one boat, sir. Senior Officer Werner is being brought in now, sir. His boat is still two diameters out, sir, and it will take us nearly an hour to get him down without extreme discomfort, sir."

"Then we'll wait," said Hardwick. "Hm-m-m. Call us again before you start hunting us with the landing-beam. My pilot has a rather promising idea. And will you call us on the proper frequency then, please?"

The voice aground said unhappily:

"Yes, sir. Certainly, sir."

The carrier-wave hum stopped. Young Barnes said gratefully:

"Thank you, sir! Hell hath no fury like a ranking officer caught in a blunder! He'd have twisted my tail for his mistake, sir, and it could have been bad!" Then he paused. He said uneasily, "But ... beg pardon, sir! I haven't any promising ideas. Not that I know of!"

"You have an hour to develop one," Hardwick told him.

Internally, Hardwick was disturbed. There were few occasions on which even one Senior Officer was called in to Sector Headquarters. Interstellar distances being what they were, and thirty light-speeds being practically the best available, Senior Officers necessarily acted pretty much as independent authorities. To call one man in meant all his other work had to go by the board for a matter of months. But two—And Werner?

Werner was getting to ground first. If there were something serious ashore, Werner would make a great point of arriving first, even if only by hours. A keen sort of person in giving the right impression, he'd risen in the Service faster than Hardwick. That other Lawlor field would have been his ship getting out of the way.

The young officer at his elbow fidgeted.

"Beg pardon, sir. What sort of idea should I develop, sir? I'm not sure I understand—"

"It's rather annoying to have to stay parked in free fall," said Hardwick patiently. "And it's always a good practice to review annoying situations and see if they can be bettered."

Barnes' forehead wrinkled.

"We could land much quicker on rockets, sir. And ... even when the landing-grid reaches out for us, since we've no gravity-coils, they'll have to handle us very cautiously or they'd break our necks!"

Hardwick nodded. Barnes was thinking straight enough, but it takes young officers a long time to think of thinking straight. They have to obey so many orders unquestioningly that they tend to stop doing anything else. Yet at each rise in grade some slight trace of increased capacity to think is required. In order to reach really high rank, an officer has to be capable of thinking which simply isn't possible unless he's kept in practice on the way up.

Young Barnes looked up, startled.

"Look here, sir!" he said, surprised. "If it takes them an hour to let down Senior Officer Werner from two planetary diameters, it'll take much longer to let us down from out here!"

"True," said Hardwick.

"And you don't want to spend three hours descending, sir, after waiting an hour for him!"

"I don't," admitted Hardwick. He could have given orders, of course. But if a junior officer were spurred to the practice of thinking, it might mean that some day he'd be a better senior officer. And Hardwick knew how desperately few men were really adequate for high authority. Anything that could be done to increase the number—

Young Barnes blinked.

"But it doesn't matter to the landing-grid how far out we are!" he said in an astonished voice. "They could lock on to us at ten diameters, or at one! Once they lock the field-focus on us, when they move it they move us!"

Hardwick nodded again.

"So ... so by the time they've got that other boat landed ... why ... I can use rockets and get down to one diameter myself, sir! And they can lock onto us there and let us down a few thousand miles only! So we can get to ground half an hour after the other boat's down instead of four hours from now."

"Just so," agreed Hardwick. "At a cost of a little thought and a little fuel. You do have a promising idea after all, lieutenant. Suppose you carry it out?"

Young Barnes glanced at Hardwick's safety-strap. He threw over the fuel-ready lever and conscientiously waited the conventional few seconds for the first molecules of fuel to be catalyzed cold. Once firing started, they'd be warmed to detonation-readiness in the last few millimeters of the injection-gap.

"Firing, sir," he said respectfully.

There was the curious sound of a rocket blasting in emptiness, when the sound is conveyed only by the rocket-tube's metal. There was the smooth, pushing sensation of acceleration. The tiny ship's boat swung and aimed down at the planet. Lieutenant Barnes leaned forward and punched the ship's computer.

"I hope you'll excuse me, sir," he said awkwardly. "I should have thought that out myself, sir, without prompting. But problems like this don't turn up very often, sir. As a rule it's wisest to follow precedents as if they were orders."

Hardwick said dryly:

"To be sure! But one reason for the existence of junior officers is the fact that some day there will have to be new senior ones."

Barnes considered. Then he said surprisedly:

"I never thought of it that way, sir. Thank you."

He continued to punch the computer keys, frowning. Hardwick relaxed in his seat, held there by the gentle acceleration and the belt. He'd had nothing by which to judge the reason for his summoning to Headquarters. He had very little now. But there was trouble of some sort below. Two senior officers dragged from their own work. Werner, now—Hardwick preferred not to estimate Werner. He disliked the man, and would be biased. But he was able, though definitely on the make. And there was himself. They'd been called to Headquarters where no ship was to be landed by landing-grid, nor any rocket to come to ground. A landing-grid could pluck a ship out of space ten planet-diameters out, and draw it with gentle violence shoreward, and land it lightly as a feather. A landing-grid could take the heaviest, loaded freighter and stop it in orbit and bring it down at eight gravities. But the one below wouldn't land even a tiny Survey ship! And a landing-boat was forbidden to come down on its rockets!

Hardwick arranged those items in his mind. He knew the planet below, of course. When he got his Senior rating he'd spent six months at Headquarters learning procedures and practices proper to his increased authority. There was one inhabitable island, two hundred miles long and possibly forty wide. There was no other usable ground outside the Arctic.

The one occupied island had gigantic sheer cliffs on its windward side, where a great slab of bedrock had split along some submarine fault and tilted upward above the surface. Those cliffs were four thousand feet high, but from them the island sloped very, very gently and very gradually until its leeward shore slipped under the restless sea.

Sector Headquarters had been placed here because it seemed that civilians would not want to colonize so limited a world. But there were civilians, because there was Headquarters. And now every inch of ground was cultivated and there was irrigation and intensive farming and some hydroponic establishments. But Sector Headquarters included a vast reserve area on which a space-fleet might be marshaled in case of need. The overcrowded civilians were bitter because of the great uncultivated area the Survey needed for storage and possible emergency use. Even when Hardwick was here, years back, there was bitterness because the Survey crowded the civilian economy which had been based on it.

Hardwick considered all these items. He came to an uncomfortable conclusion. Presently he looked up. The planet loomed larger. Much larger.

"I think you'd better lose all planetward velocity before we hook on," he observed. "The landing-grid crew might have trouble focusing on us so close if we're moving."

"Yes, sir," said the young officer. "I will, sir."

"There's some sort of merry hell below," said Hardwick wryly. "It looks bad that they won't let a ship come down by grid. It looks worse that they won't let this one land on its rockets." He paused. "I doubt they'll risk lifting us off again."

Young Barnes finished his computations. He looked satisfied. He glanced at the now-gigantic planet below. He deftly adjusted the course of the tiny boat. Then he jerked his head around.

"Excuse me, sir. Did you say we mightn't be able to lift off again?"

"I could almost predict that we won't," said Hardwick.

"Would you ... could you say why, sir?"

"They don't want landings. The trouble is here. If they don't want landings, they won't want launchings. Werner and I were sent for, so presumably we're needed. But apparently there's uneasiness about even our landing. Surely they won't send us off again. I suspect—"

The loud-speaker said tinnily:

"Calling boat from landing-grid! Calling boat from landing-grid!"

"Come in," said Barnes. But he looked uneasily at Hardwick.

"Correct your course!" commanded the voice sharply. "You are not to land on rockets under any circumstances! This is an order from the Sector Chief himself! Stand off! We will be ready to lock on and land you gently in about fifteen minutes. But meanwhile stand off!"

"Yes, sir," said young Barnes.

Hardwick reached over and took the microphone.

"Hardwick speaking," he said. "I'd like information. What's the trouble down there that we can't use our rockets?"

"Rockets are noisy, sir. Even boat-rockets. We have orders to prevent all physical vibration possible, sir. But I am ordered not to give details on a transmitter, sir."

"I'll sign off," said Hardwick, dryly.

He pushed the microphone away. He deplored his own lack of aggressiveness. Werner, now, would have pulled his rank and insisted on being informed. But Hardwick couldn't help believing that there was a reason for orders that over-ruled his own.

The young officer swung the rocket end-for-end. The sensation of pressure against the back of Hardwick's seat increased.

Minutes later the speaker said:

"Grid to boat. Prepare for lock-on."

"Ready, sir," said Barnes.

The small boat shuddered and leaped crazily. It spun. It oscillated violently through seconds-long arcs in emptiness. Very, very gradually, the oscillations died. There was a momentary sensation of the faint tugging of planetary weight, which is somehow subtly different from the feel of artificial gravity. Then the cosmos turned upside down as the boat was drawn very swiftly toward the watery planet below it.

Some minutes later, young Barnes spoke apologetically:

"Beg pardon, sir," he said diffidently. "I must be stupid, sir, but I can't imagine any reason why vibrations or noise should make any difference on a planet. How could it do harm?"

"This is an ocean-planet," said Hardwick. "It might make people drown."

The young officer flushed. He turned his head away. And Hardwick reflected ruefully that the young were always sensitive. But he did not speak again. When they landed in the vast, spidery landing-grid—a vast metal grid-work a full half-mile high—Barnes would find out whether he was right or not.

He did. And Hardwick was right. The people on Canna III were anxious to avoid vibrations because they were afraid of drowning.

Their fears seemed to be rather well-founded.

II

Three hours after landing, Hardwick moved gingerly over grayish muddy rock, with a four-thousand-foot sheer drop some twenty yards away. The ragged edge of a cliff fell straight down for the better part of a mile. Far below, the sea rippled gently. Hardwick saw a long, long line of boats moving slowly out to sea. They towed something between them which reached from boat to boat in exaggerated catenary curves. The boats moved in line abreast straight out from the cliffs, towing this floating, curved thing between them.

Hardwick regarded them for a moment and then inspected the grayish mud underfoot. He lifted his eyes to the inland side of this peculiar stretch of mountainside muddiness. There was a mast on the rock not far away. It held up what looked like a vision-camera.

Young Barnes said:

"Excuse me, sir. What are those boats doing?"

"They're towing an oil-slick out to sea," said Hardwick absently, "by towing a floating line of some sort between them. There isn't enough oil to maintain the slick, and it's blown landward. So they tow it out to sea again. It holds down the seas. Every time, of course, they lose some of it."

"But—"

"There are trade winds," said Hardwick, not looking to seaward at all. "They always blow in the same direction, nearly. They blow three-quarters of the way around the planet, and they build up seas as they blow. Normally, the swells that pound against this cliff, here, will be a hundred feet and more from crest to crest. They'll throw spray ten times that high, of course, and once when I was here before, spray came over the cliff-top. The impacts of the waves are—heavy. In a storm, if you put your ear to the ground on the leeward shore, you can hear the waves smash against these cliffs. It's vibration."

Barnes looked uneasily at the cliff's edge and the line of boats pushing sturdily over an ocean whose waves seemed less than ripples from nearly a mile above them. But the line of boats was incredibly long. It was twenty miles in length at the least, and between each two boats there was the long curved line of something being towed on the surface.

"The ... slick holds down the waves," Barnes guessed. "It ... works best in deep water, I believe. The ancients knew it. Oil on the waters." He considered. "Working hard to prevent vibrations! Are they really so dangerous, sir?"

Hardwick nodded inland. And, at a quarter-mile from the edge of the cliff there was a peculiar, broken, riven rampart of soil. It might have been forty feet high, once. Now it was shattered and cracked. It had the quite incredible look of having been pulled away from where Hardwick stood, and of having partly disintegrated as it was withdrawn. There were vertical breaks in its edges. There were broken-off masses left behind. At one place a clump of perhaps a quarter-acre had not followed the rest, and trees leaned drunkenly from its top, and at the edge had fallen outward. And all along the top of the stone cliff for as far as the eye could see there was this singular retreat of soil and vegetation from the cliff's edge.

Hardwick stooped and picked up a bit of the mud underfoot. He rubbed it between his fingers. It yielded like modeling clay. He dipped a finger into a gray, greasy-seeming puddle. He looked at the thick liquid on his finger and then rubbed it against his other palm. Young Barnes duplicated this last action.

"It ... feels soapy, sir!" he said blankly. "Like ... wet soap!"

"Yes," said Hardwick. "That's the first problem here."

He turned to a ground-service Survey private. He jerked his head along the coast line.

"How much have other places slipped?"

"Anywhere from this much, sir," said the private, "to two miles and upward. There's one place where it's moving at a regular rate. Four inches an hour, sir. It was three-and-a-half yesterday."

Hardwick nodded.

"Hm-m-m. We'll go back to Headquarters. Nasty business!"

He plodded over the extraordinarily messy footing toward the vehicle which had brought him here. It was not an ordinary ground-car. Instead of tires or caterwheels, it rolled upon flaccid, partly-inflated five-foot rollers. They would be completely unaffected by roughness or slipperiness of terrain, and if the vehicle fell overboard it would float. But it was thickly coated with the gray mud of this cliff-top.

As he moved along, Hardwick was able to see the pattern of the rock underneath the mud. It was curiously contorted, like something that had curdled rather than cooled. And, as a matter of fact, it was believed to have solidified slowly under water at such monstrous pressure that even molten rock could not make it burst into steam. But it was above-water now.

Hardwick climbed into the vehicle, and Barnes followed him. The bolster-truck turned. It moved toward the broken barrier of earth. Its five-foot flabby rollers seemed rather to flow over than to surmount obstacles. Great lumps of drier dirt dented them and did not disintegrate. There were no stones.

Hardwick frowned to himself. The bolster-truck more or less flowed up the crumbling, inexplicably drawing-back mass of soil. Atop it, things looked almost normal. Almost. There was a highway leading away from the cliff. At first glance it seemed perfect. But it was cracked down the middle for a hundred yards, and then the crack meandered off to the side and was gone. There was a great tree, which leaned drunkenly. A mile along the roadway its surface buckled as if something had pressed irresistibly upward from below. The truck rolled over the break.

It was notable that the motion of the truck was utterly smooth. It made no vibration at all. But even so it slowed before it moved through a place where houses—dwellings and a shop or two—clustered closely together on each side of the road.

There were people in and about the houses, but they were doing nothing at all. Some of them stared hostilely at the Survey truck. Some others deliberately turned their backs to it. There were vehicles out of shelter and ready to be used, but none was moving. All—very oddly—were pointed in the direction from which the bolster-truck had come.

The truck went on. Presently the extraordinary flatness of the landscape became apparent. It was possible to see a seemingly illimitable distance. The ocean forty miles away showed as a thread of blue beneath the horizon. The island was an almost perfectly plane surface. But the windward side was tilted up to a height of four thousand feet above the sea, and the downwind side slipped gently beneath the waves. There was no hill visible anywhere. No mountains. No valleys save the extremely minor gullies worn by rain. Even they had been filled in, or dammed, and tied in to irrigation systems.

There was a place where there was a row of trees along such a water-course. Half the row was fallen, and a part of the rest was tilted. The remainder stood upright and firm. All the vegetation was perfectly familiar. Most colonies have some vegetation, at least, directly descended from the mother planet Earth. But this island on Canna III had been above-water perhaps no more than three or four thousand years. There had been no time for local vegetation to develop. When the Survey took it over, there was only tidal seaweed, only one variety of which had been able to extend itself in web-like fashion over the soil above water. Terrestrial plants had wiped it out, and everything was green, and everything was human-introduced.

But there was something wrong with the ground. At this place the top of the soil bulged, and tall corn-plants grew extravagantly in different directions. There, there was a narrow, lipless gap in the ground's surface. An irrigation-ditch poured water into it. It was not filled.

Barnes said distressedly:

"Excuse me, sir, but how the devil did this happen?"

"There's been irrigation," said Hardwick patiently. "The soil here was all ocean-bottom, once—it used to be what is called globigerinous ooze. There's no sand. There are no stones. There's only bedrock and formerly abyssal mud. And—some of it underneath is no longer former. It's globigerinous ooze again."

He waved his hand at the landscape. It had been remarkably tidy, once. Every square foot of ground had been cultivated. The highways were of limited width, and the houses were neat and trim. It was, perhaps, the most completely civilized landscape in the galaxy. But Hardwick added:

"You said the stuff felt like soap. In a way it's acting like soap. It lies on slightly slanting, effectively smooth rock, like a soap-cake on a slightly slanting sheet of metal. And that's the trouble. So long as a cake of soap is dry on the bottom it doesn't move. Even if you pour water on top, like rain, the top will wet, and the water will flow off, but the bottom won't wet until all the soap is dissolved away. While that was the process here, everything was all right. But they've been irrigating."

They passed a row of neat cottages facing the road. One had collapsed completely. The others looked absolutely normal. The bolster-truck went on.

Hardwick said, frowning:

"They wanted the water to go into the soil. So they arranged it. A little of that did no harm. Plants growing dried it out again. One tree evaporates thousands of gallons a day in a good trade wind. There were some landslides in the early days, especially when storm-swells pounded the cliffs, but on the whole the ground was more firmly anchored when first cultivated than it had been before the colonists came."

"But—irrigation? The sea's not fresh, is it?"

"Water-freshening plants," said Hardwick dryly. "Ion-exchange systems. They installed them and had all the fresh water they could wish for. And they wished for a lot. They deep-plowed, so the water would sink in. They dammed the water-courses—and it sank in. What they did amounted to something like boring holes in the cake of soap I used for an illustration just now. Water went right down to the bottom. What would happen then?"

Barnes said:

"Why ... the bottom would wet ... and slide! As if it were greased!"

"Not greased," corrected Hardwick. "Soaped. Soap is viscous. That is different—and a lucky difference! But the least vibration would encourage movement. And it does. It has. So the population is now walking on eggs. Worse, it's walking on the equivalent of a cake of soap which is getting wetter and wetter on the bottom. It's already sliding as a viscous substance does—reluctantly. But in spite of the oil-slick they're trying to keep in place upwind there's still some battering from the sea. There are still some vibrations in the bedrock. And so there's a slow, and gentle, and gradual sliding."

"And they figure," said Barnes abruptly, "that locking onto a ship with the landing-grid might be like an earthquake." He stopped. "An earthquake, now—"

"Not much vulcanism on this planet," Hardwick told him. "But of course there are tectonic quakes occasionally. They made this island."

Barnes said uneasily:

"I don't think, sir, that I'd sleep well if I lived here."

"You are living here for the moment. But at your age I think you'll sleep."

The bolster-truck turned, following the highway. The road was very even, and the motion of the truck along it was infinitely smooth. Its lack of vibration explained why it was permitted to move when all other vehicles were stopped. But Hardwick reflected uneasily that this did not account for the orders of the Sector Chief forbidding the rocket-landing of a ship's boat. It was true enough that the living-surface of the island rested upon slanting stone, and that if the bottom were wet enough it could slide off into the sea. It already had moved. At least one place was moving at four inches per hour. But that was viscous flow. It would be enhanced by vibration, and assuredly the hammering of seas upon the windward cliff should be lessened by any possible means.

But it did not mean that the sound of a rocket-landing would be disastrous, nor that the straining of a landing-grid as it stopped a space-ship in orbit and drew it to ground should produce a landslide. There was something else—though the situation for the island's civilian population was assuredly serious enough. If any really massive movement of the ground did begin, viscous or any other; if any considerable part of the island's surface did begin to move—all of it would go. And the population would go with it. If there were survivors, they could be numbered in dozens.

The tall tamped-earth wall of the Headquarters reserve area loomed ahead. Sector Headquarters had been established here when there were no other inhabitants. Seeds had been broadcast and trees planted while the survey buildings were under construction. Headquarters, in fact, had been built upon an uninhabited planet. But colonists followed in the wake of Survey personnel. Wives and children, and then storekeepers and agriculturists, and presently civilian technicians and ultimately even politicians arrived as the non-Service population grew. Now Sector Headquarters was resented because it occupied one fourth of the island. It kept too much of the planet's useful surface out of civilian use. And the island was now desperately overcrowded.

But it seemed also to be doomed.

As the bolster-truck moved silently toward Headquarters, a hundred-yard section of the wall collapsed. There was an upsurging of dust. There was a rumbling of falling, hardened wall. The truck's driver turned white. A civilian beside the road faced the wall and wrung his hands, and stood waiting to feel the ground under his feet begin to sweep smoothly toward the here-distant sea. A post held up a traffic signal some twenty yards from the gate. It leaned slowly. At a forty-five-degree tilt it checked and hung stationary. Fifty yards from the gate, a new crack appeared across the road.

But nothing more happened. Nothing. Yet one could not be sure that some critical point had not been passed, so that from now on there would be a gradual rise in the creeping of the soil toward the ocean.

Barnes caught his breath.

"That—makes one feel queer," he said unsteadily. "A ... shock like that wall falling could start everything off!"

Hardwick said nothing at all. It had occurred to him that there was no irrigation of the Survey area. He frowned very thoughtfully—even worriedly, as the truck went inside the Headquarters gate and rolled smoothly on over a winding road through definitely parklike surroundings.

It stopped before the building which was the Sector Chief's own headquarters in Headquarters. A large brown dog dozed peacefully on the plastic-tiled landing at the top of half a dozen steps. When Hardwick got out of the truck the dog got up with a leisurely air. When Hardwick ascended the steps, with Barnes following him, the dog came forward with a sort of stately courtesy to do the honors. Hardwick said:

"Nice dog, that."

He went inside. The dog sedately followed. The interior of the building was singularly empty. There was a sort of resonant silence until somewhere a telewriter began to click.

"Come along," said Hardwick. "The Sector Chief's office is over this way."

Young Barnes followed uncomfortably.

"It seems odd there's no one around. No secretaries, no sentries, nobody at all."

"Why should there be?" asked Hardwick in surprise. "The guards at the gate keep civilians out. And nobody in the Service will bother the Chief without reason. At least, not more than once!"

But across a glistening, empty floor there ran an ominous crack.

They went down a corridor. Voices sounded, and Hardwick tracked them, with the paws of the dog clicking on the floor behind him. He led the way into a spacious, comfortably nondescript room with high windows—doors, really—that opened on green lawn outside. The Sector Chief, Sandringham, leaned placidly back in a chair, smoking. Werner, the other summoned Senior Officer, sat bolt upright in a chair facing him. Sandringham waved a hand cordially to Hardwick.

"Back so soon? You're ahead of schedule on all counts! Here's Werner, back from looking at the fuel-store situation."

Hardwick suddenly looked as if he'd been jolted. But he nodded, and Werner tried to smile and failed. He was completely white.

"My pilot from the ship, who's kept aground," said Hardwick. "Lieutenant Barnes. Very promising young officer. Cut my landing-time by hours. Lieutenant, this is Sector Chief Sandringham and Mr. Werner."

"Have a seat, Hardwick," grunted the Chief. "You, too, lieutenant. How does it look up on the cliff, Hardwick?"

"I suspect you know as well as I do," said Hardwick. "I think I saw a vision-camera planted up there."

"True enough. But there's nothing like on-the-spot inspection. Now you're back, how does it look to you?"

"Inadequate," said Hardwick with some dryness. "Inadequate to explain some things I've noticed. But it's a very bad situation. Its degree of badness depends on the viscosity of the mud at bedrock all over the island. The left-behind mud's like pea soup. It looks really bad! But what's the viscosity at bedrock with soil pressing down—and I hope drier soil than at the bottom?"

Sandringham grunted.

"Good question. I sent for you, Hardwick, when it began to look bad, before the ground really started sliding. When I thought it might begin any time. The viscosity averages pretty closely at three times ten to the sixth. Which still gives us some leeway. But not enough."

"Not nearly enough!" said Hardwick impatiently. "Irrigation should have been stopped a long while back!"

The Sector Chief grimaced.

"I've no authority over civilians. They've their own planetary government. And do you remember?" He quoted: "'Civilian establishments and governments may be advised by Colonial Survey officials, and may make requests of them, but in each case such advice or request is to be considered on its own merits only, and in no case can it be the subject of a quid-pro-quo agreement.'" He added grimly: "That means you can't threaten. It's been thrown at my head every time I've asked them to cut down their irrigation in the past fifteen years! I advised them not to irrigate at all, and they couldn't see it. It would increase the food-supply, and they needed more food. So they went ahead. They built two new sea-water freshening plants only last year!"

Werner licked his lips. He said in a voice that was higher-pitched than Hardwick remembered:

"What's happening serves them right! It serves them right!"

Hardwick waited.

"Now," said Sandringham, "they are demanding to be let into Sector Headquarters for safety. They say we haven't irrigated, so the ground we occupy isn't going to slide. They demand that we take them all in here to sit on their rumps until the rest of the island slides into the sea or doesn't. If it doesn't, they want to wait here until the soil becomes stable again because they've quit irrigating."

"It'd serve them right if we let them in!" cried Werner in shrill anger. "It's their fault that they're in this fix!"

Sandringham waved his hand.

"Administering abstract justice isn't my job. I imagine it's handled in more competent quarters. I have only to meet the objective situation. Which"—he paused—"is plenty! Hardwick, you've handled swamp-planet situations. What can be done to stop the sliding of the island's soil before it all goes overboard?"

"Not much, offhand," said Hardwick. "Give me time and I'll manage something. But a really bad storm, with high seas and plenty of rain, might wipe out the whole civilian colony. That viscosity figure is close to hopeless—if not quite."

The Sector Chief looked impassive.

"How much time does he have, Werner?"

"None!" said Werner shrilly. "The only possible thing is to try to move as many people as possible to the solid ground in the Arctic! The boats can be crowded—the situation demands it! And if the two space-craft in orbit are sent to collect a fleet, and as many people as possible are moved at once—there may be some survivors!"

Hardwick spread out his hands.

"I'm wondering," he observed, "what the really serious problem is. There's more than sliding soil the matter! Else you would ... I'm sure Lieutenant Barnes has thought of this ... let the civilian population into Headquarters to sit on its rump and wait for better times."

Sandringham glanced at young Barnes, who flushed hotly at being noticed.

"I'm sure you have good reasons, sir," he said embarrassedly.

"I have several," said the Sector Chief dryly. "For one thing, so long as we refuse to let them in, they're reassured. They can't imagine we'd let them down. But if we invited them in they'd panic and fight to get in first. There'd be a full-scale slaughter right there! They'd be sure disaster was only minutes off. Which it would be!"

He paused and glanced from one to the other of the senior officers.

"When I sent for you," he said wryly, "I meant for you, Hardwick, to take care of the possible sliding. I meant for Werner, here, to do the public-relations job of scaring the civilians just enough to make them let it be done. It's not so simple, now!"

He drew a deep breath.

"It's pure chance that there is a Sector Headquarters. Or else it's Providence. We'll find that out later! But ten days ago it was discovered that an instrument had gone wrong over in the ship-fuel storage area. It didn't register when a tank leaked. And—a tank did leak. You know ship-fuel's harmless when it's refrigerated. You know what it's like when it's not. Dissolved in soil-moisture, it's not only catalyzed to explosive condition, but it's a hell of a corrosive, and it's eaten holes in some other tanks—and can you imagine trying to do anything about that?"

Hardwick felt a sensation of incredulous shock. Werner wrung his hands.

"If I could only find the man who made that faulty tank!" he said thickly. "He's killed all of us! All! Unless we get to solid ground in the Arctic!"

The Sector Chief said calmly:

"That's why I won't let them in, Hardwick. Our storage tanks go down to bedrock. The leaked fuel—warmed up, now—is seeping along bedrock and eating at other tanks, besides being absorbed generally by the soil and dissolving in the ground-water. We've pulled all personnel out of all the area it could have seeped down to."

Hardwick felt slightly cold at the back of his neck.

"I suspect," he said wryly, "that they came out on tiptoe, holding their breaths, and that they were careful not to drop anything or scrape their chairs when they got up to leave. I would have! Anything, of course, could set it off. But it is bound to go anyhow! Of course! Now I see why we couldn't make a rocket-landing!"

The chilly feeling seemed to spread as he realized more fully. When ship-fuel is refrigerated during its manufacture, it is about as safe a substance as can be imagined—so long as it is kept refrigerated. It is an energy-chemical compound, of atoms bound together with forced-valence linkages. But enormous amounts of energy are required to force valences upon reluctant atoms.

When ship-fuel warms up, or is catalyzed, it goes on one step beyond the process of its manufacture. It goes on to the modification the refrigeration prevented. It changes its molecular configuration. What was stable because it was cold becomes something which is hysterically unstable because of its structure. The touch of a feather can detonate it. A shout can set it off.

It is, indeed, burned only molecule by molecule in a ship's engines, being catalyzed to the unstable state while cold at the very spot where it is to detonate. And since the energy yielded by detonation is that of the forced bonds ... why ... the energy-content of ship-fuel is much greater than a merely chemical compound can contain. Ship-fuel contains a measurable fraction of the power of atomic explosive. But it is much more practical for use on board ship.

The point now was, of course, that leaked into the ground and warmed ... why ... practically any vibratory motion will detonate it. Even dissolved, it can detonate because it is not a chemical but an energy-release action.

"A good, drumming, heavy rain," said Sandringham very calmly indeed, "which falls on this end of the island, will undoubtedly set off some scores of tons of leaked ship-fuel. And that ought to scatter and catalyze and detonate the rest. The explosion should be equivalent to at least a megaton fusion bomb." He paused, and added with irony, "Pretty situation, isn't it? If the civilians hadn't irrigated, we could evacuate Headquarters and let it blow—as it will anyhow. If the fuel hadn't leaked, we could let in the civilians until the island's soil decides what it's going to do. Either would be a nasty situation, but the combination—"

Werner said shrilly:

"Evacuation to the Arctic is the only possible answer! Some people can be saved! Some! I'll take a boat and equipment and go on ahead and get some sort of refuge ready."

There was dead silence. The brown dog, who had followed Hardwick from the outer terrace, now yawned loudly. Hardwick reached over and absent-mindedly scratched his ears. Young Barnes swallowed.

"Beg pardon, sir," he said awkwardly. "But what's the weather forecast?"

"Continued fair," said Sandringham pleasantly. "That's why I had Hardwick and Werner come down. Three heads are better than one. I've gambled their lives on their brains."

Hardwick continued thoughtfully to scratch the brown dog's ears. Werner licked his lips. Young Barnes looked from one to another of them. Then he looked back at the Sector Chief.

"Sir," he said awkwardly. "I ... I think the odds are pretty good. Mr. Hardwick, sir—He'll manage!"

Then he flushed hotly at his own presumption in saying something consoling to a Sector Chief. It was comparable to telling him how to top off his vacuum-suit tanks.

But the Sector Chief nodded in grave approval and turned to Hardwick to hear what he had to say.

III

The leeward side of the island went very gently into the water. From a boat offshore—say, a couple of miles out—the shoreline looked low and flat and peaceful. There were houses in view, and there were boats afloat. But they were much smaller than those that had been towing a twenty-mile-long oil-slick out to sea. These boats did not ply back and forth. Most of them seemed anchored. On some of them there was activity. Men went overboard, without splashing, and things came up from the ocean bottom and were dumped inside their hulls, and then baskets went back down into the water. At long intervals—quite long intervals—men emerged from underwater and sat on the sides of the boats and smoked with an effect of leisure.

There was sunshine, and the land was green, and a seeming of vast tranquillity hung over the whole seascape. But the small Survey-personnel recreation-boat moved in toward the shore, and the look of things changed. At a mile, a mass of green that had seemed to be trees growing down to the water's edge became a thicket of tumbled trunks and overset branches where a tree-thicket had collapsed. At half a mile the water was opaque. There were things floating in it—the roof of a house; the leaves of an ornamental shrub, with nearby its roots showing at the surface, washed clean. A child's toy bobbed past the boat. It looked horribly pathetic. There were the exotic planes and angles of three wooden steps, floating in the ripples of the great ocean.

"Ignoring the imminent explosion of the fuel store," said Hardwick dryly, "we need to find out something about what has to be done to the soil to stop its creeping. I hope you remembered, lieutenant, to ask a great many useless questions."

"Yes, sir," said Barnes. "I tried to, sir. I asked everything I could think of."

"Those boats yonder?"

Hardwick indicated a boat from which something like a wire basket splashed into the water as he gestured.

"A garden boat, sir," said Barnes. "On this side of the island the sea bottom slopes so gradually, sir, that there are sea gardens on the bottom. Shellfish from Earth do not thrive, sir, but there are edible sea plants. The gardeners cultivate them as on land, sir."

Hardwick reached overside and carefully took his twentieth sample of the sea water. He squinted, and estimated the distance to shore.

"I shall try to imagine someone wearing a diving mask and using a hoe," he said dryly. "What's the depth here?"

"We're half a mile out, sir," said Barnes promptly. "It should be about sixty feet, sir. The bottom seems to have about a three per cent grade, sir. That's the angle of repose of the mud. There's no sand to make a steeper slope possible."

"Three per cent's not bad!"

Hardwick looked pleased. He picked up one of his earlier samples and tilted it, checking the angle at which the sediment came to rest. The bottom mud, here, was essentially the same as the soil of the land. But the soil of the island was infinitely finely-divided. In fresh water it floated practically like a colloid. In sea water, obviously, it sank because of the salinity which made suspension difficult.

"You see the point, eh?" he asked. When Barnes shook his head, Hardwick explained, "Probably for my sins I've had a good deal to do with swamp planets. The mud of a salt swamp is quite different from a fresh-water swamp. The essential trouble with the people ashore is that by their irrigation they've contrived an island-wide swamp which happens to be upside down—the mud at the bottom. So the question is, can it acquire the properties of a salt swamp instead of a fresh-water swamp without killing all the vegetation on the surface? That's why I'm after these samples. As we go inshore the water should be fresher—on a shallowing shore like this with drainage in this direction."

He gestured to the Survey private at the stern of the boat.

"Closer in, please."

Barnes said:

"Sir, motorboats are forbidden inshore. The vibrations."

Hardwick shrugged.

"We will obey the rule. I've probably samples enough. How far out do the mudflats run—at the surface?"

"About two hundred yards at the surface, sir. The mud's about the consistency of thick cream. You can see where the ripples stop, sir."

Hardwick stared. He turned his eyes away.

"Er ... sir," said Barnes unhappily. "May I ask, sir—"

Hardwick said dryly:

"You may. But the answer's pure theory. This information will do no good at all unless all the rest of the problem we face is solved. But solving the rest of the problem will do no good if this part remains unsolved. You see?"