The Nitrogen Fix Read online

  The human couple paused and glanced at each other, but Bones kept running toward the jail. After a moment they followed, but both kept glancing quickly to the fire, back to the raft, and forward to the stone structure, while staying as far as possible from any bushes close to their path.

  The native had almost reached the building, with the others eight or ten meters behind, when there was a second, heavier explosion. All three stopped to watch the glowing fragments of stems, trunks, and branches fly upward and outward, each trailing a line of red-brown nitrogen dioxide smoke and gas.

  They tensed as some of the material passed over their heads, and Earrin and Kahvi held their breaths as several incandescent fragments fell into the water on both sides of the raft.

  Kahvi took a step back the way they had come, but stopped as she saw her daughter’s tiny form stand firm between two water buckets. Evidently nothing had hit the tent this time.

  Then a scream, in a voice much deeper than Danna’s, turned their attention back toward the jail.

  II

  Cooling, Carefully

  The building had walls of rough stone, with no visible mortar. The cement which held it together as flammable as ordinary tent tissue, but had been applied only to the inside of the walls; it was safe from outside fire unless one of the more flammable varieties of slime were allowed to grow on the stones. The roof, however, was another matter. It had to be transparent to let sunlight reach the oxygen plants inside.

  Unless some change had been made since the Fyns’ last visit, it was composed of the same material as their own tent on the raft, and their other bases. It was not actually explosive, but vulnerable to fire whendry.

  The scream seemed to suggest that there had been no change, not a surprising situation for the Boston area.

  Earrin dashed up to the building; he did not need Bones’ gesture to tell him the cause of the outcry, though only the Observer was tall enough to see all the roof. The man climbed the wall without difficulty, using the ample toe-spaces between the stones. His sponge was already wet.

  There were three widening holes in the roof, smoking briskly around their edges. Earrin got as close as he could to the nearest, reached out with his pole, and began sponging its rim. It was tempting to move the pole too fast, but nitrate-fed fires were not smothered; they had to be cooled. Earrin had had far too much experience to let himself be rushed on this job.

  This did not seen to be true of the person inside.

  There had been no more screams, which was encouraging — perhaps the first had been mere surprise, not panic. Now a sponge was dabbing at the second hole from underneath — but it was going too fast; the widening rim of the opening resumed its hissing and smoking as the sponge passed on.

  “Slow down!” Earrin cried as loudly as his mask would allow. “You’re not getting it out!”

  A less muffled male voice responded. “But there’s more than one! If I don’t go fast, the others will get too big!”

  Earrin was startled by this logic, but attacked from another direction. “We’ll get the others. You stick with that one, and slow down.” His use of the plural had been slightly deceptive, he suddenly realized, since neither Bones nor Kahvi had sponges, but there was no time to make amends for the moral slip. At least it had been effective; the occupant of the jail followed instructions.

  Earrin finished the hole he had started, and leaped along the wall to the remaining one. At the same moment another explosion sounded, but he kept his attention on his job. Kahvi and Bones would warn him if any other action was necessary. He wished they had more sponges, but there had been no way of telling before they left the raft just what would be needed; it had been at least as likely that they would have to be hoeing firebreaks around the jail. One thing did occur to him as he moved, and he called out, “Kahvi! Bones! There’s at least one more sponge inside. Check there before you go back to the raft for anything!

  “Right,” his wife responded. “That last blast was weaker, and nothing got this far. If I go inside I’ll let you know so you can watch the raft. Danna can handle that much by herself.”

  “Right.” Earrin had reached the last hole, and was working on it. It had had time to grow large, over twenty centimeters across, and the sponge might not be enough, but one could only try.

  The near edge of the sputtering circle sizzled more loudly as the still-wet tool drank its heat. Earrin moved it along as fast as he dared. The sponge itself was only a dozen centimeters across — it would be nice, he thought fleetingly, if larger ones could be found, but the pseudolife which produced the things had apparently been designed for some long-forgotten purpose that needed small sponges. At least it was still holding plenty of water.

  By the time he was halfway around the hole, it was evident that geometry was against him. Without stopping his own efforts, the man called out, “Bones! Knife work!”

  The hole was near one corner of the roof, not quite a meter from the south and west walls. The Observer was tall enough to see the situation without climbing, and the tentacles which extended from just below the bulging eyes were more than long enough. One of them slipped the glass-bladed knife from Earrin’s pouch and began sawing at the rim of the hole. The blade was not really knifelike by earlier standards — it would have done better as one half of a pair of scissors — but the tissue gave easily under its attack. Bones started on the side where the fire was already out, slashed outward, and then began to saw clockwise. A strip of separated material began to hang down into the room, and started to flame in the breathable air inside. Bones worked faster, and got the strip separated before it had ignited more of the roof, and the flaming stuff dropped out of sight inside. Earrin held his sponge ready for several seconds, but luck had apparently been with them.

  “All right, Kahv,” he finally called. “We got two, the fellow inside put out the other. Can you see if Dan’s all right? This mask window is terrible.”“I can see her pretty well. She’s just standing there, and there’s no smoke, so I guess the raft wasn’t hit. I’ll go back and make sure, and get another sponge; we won’t need a fire break, I’d say. You and Bones stay here — the fire over the hill is still going, judging by the smoke there.”

  “Maybe it would be better for Bones to go back,” Earrin pointed out. “He can travel faster, and it would be better for you to talk to this fellow inside.”

  “All right,” the woman agreed. “Bones — ” she shifted from mostly voice to mostly gesture. The fishlike being waved agreement with an upper tentacle and moved away, the strangely rigid walking tendrils moving almost invisibly fast.

  Another explosion took the human beings’ attention from raft and messenger for a moment, but again nothing fell dangerously close to either structure.

  “I don’t see how this can last much longer,” Earrin remarked. “It’s strange that the smoke is all coming up from one spot, as though the initial fire weren’t spreading. How could it have so much fuel in one spot?”

  “You stay up there and watch. I’ll go in and see if the jailbird knows anything about it,” Kahvi suggested. Earrin glanced downward. The transparent roof tissue reflected enough sky light to prevent a clear view of what was under it, but he could make out some movement.

  “Wait a minute,” he said. “I think someone’s coming out. He has a mask on, anyway.”

  “How can he do that? Has he fixed the roof already?”

  “No. Maybe —” Earrin fell silent; he could think of no possible reason for letting roof repair drop from top priority. “Maybe you’d better go in, at that,” he said at last. “I’ll watch.” Neither of them was suspicious by nature, but there was something strange here.

  Kahvi was already heading for the air lock, a pool of water extending under the east wall. Her husband watched her submerge and, with more difficulty, saw her emerge inside the building. With difficulty, he reminded himself firmly that his current job was fire watch; but he still glanced downward occasionally.

  Kahvi straightened up
— the pool was less than a meter and a half deep under the wall — and went up the steps to the floor level. They had been here before many times, and a quick glance showed little general change. Her main interest was in the room’s single occupant.

  This was a man — really little more than an adolescent — was years younger than either Kahvi or Earrin, much thinner than even the latter, and several centimeters taller than either of the Fyns. He was even thinner than the typical Hiller, and his skin showed no trace of the yellow characteristic of people who spent much time outdoors. The hundredth-normal nitric acid of the oceans was too dilute to color proteins, but the rain was sometimes another matter. His hair looked a little too long for comfortable mask work. The woman took in all this at the first glance, while stepping quickly toward the wall opposite the lock.

  “Why don’t you fix your roof?” she snapped as she threaded her way among the tables covered with oxygen plants.

  The boy swept off the mask he had been adjusting.

  “I was going to. What’s the rush?”

  “You’re letting oxygen out, and spores in. Here are your patches. Here’s the cement. Get that small hole at the north end — I can’t reach it. I’ll work on that big one over the table — you idiot! One of the trays on that table is burning! Toss it into the lock, clean it out, finish patching these holes, and then get it restocked. I suppose some stuff from the roof fell on it. Move! If you’re here for education, it doesn’t seem to be taking!”

  The youngster’s face flushed, but he made no answer. He moved at about half Kahvi’s speed to the indicated table, picked up the tray of psuedolife which was flaming in the rich atmosphere, and carried it to the air lock. The fire had started in the middle of the half-meter-square box, and had not yet come close enough to the edges to make them impossible to handle; but he winced as the flames and smoke curled upward from his burden, and held it as far from himself as his strength allowed. Kahvi noted that he also held it away from the other tables, so perhaps he was somewhere above the moron level — when she was annoyed, she sometimes didn’t distinguish carefully between stupidity and the ignorance whichcould, after all, be equally deadly.

  She leaped to the table where the burning tray had been, and reached up with the patch she had been cementing as she crossed the room. The roof was still somewhat out of reach, but a jump put her high enough to slap the square of tissue against the hole. The cement would hold it in place for the few hours it would need to grow into union with the rest of the roof. This was the largest hole, the one her husband and Bones had extinguished last. The others were not directly over tables, but with a wordless gesture she directed the jailbird to move two of the latter. Within two more minutes the roof was airtight, and she descended from the last table to face the young Hiller.

  “All right, I’m sorry I was insulting,” she said after eyeing him silently for a moment. “I suppose there’s some reason why I found you fumbling with a mask as though you were going outside, instead of fixing your roof.”

  “I was going out to help put out fires on the roof,” he replied. “Suppose a whole lot of sparks had come at once?”

  “Suppose they had. You had a sponge and water in here, and could work just as well with them as Earrin could from on top — better; you could wet your sponge more easily. There were no patches outside, and a hole needs to be patched as soon as possible. Didn’t anyone teach you that before they sent you here?”

  “Of course.” The voice and expression were sullen, now. “I’d have done the patching when no more fire arrived. Putting that out came first, it seemed to me.”

  “True enough, but someone else was taking care of that, and as I said you could do it better from inside. Were you trying to think?”

  “Of course. If you don’t think before you act, you can kill people. Everyone knows that — or weren’t you taught anything?”

  “Lots. Thinking may be all right inside a city, but outdoors or as near to outdoors are we are here, you don’t let thinking interfere with your hangups. Thinking is too slow to keep you alive. If you don’t have the right habits, then hoping is better than — grab a sponge! Here’s some more!”

  Two almost simultaneous thuds had sounded.

  There were several of the sponge-tipped rods lying against the walls; Kahvi seized one as she spoke.

  Simultaneously her husband’s voice sounded from above. “Kahv! More fire! I’ll take the east wall, where I can wet my sponge in the lock pool!”

  Kahvi tore off her mask to permit freer speech and shouted her agreement. For the next few seconds she paid no attention to the jailbird, but he also seized a rod with commendable speed, and a moment later they were far too busy to exchange anything but brief gestures as a dozen sputtering coals landed on the roof. None of the resulting holes burned wider than sponge size before being chilled into quiescence, but patches were still being applied when the next explosion sounded.

  For a quarter of an hour everyone was too occupied to think, though in one brief lull Kahvi called up to her husband, “What about the raft? Is Danna all right?” She did not allow her concern to interfere with her activity.

  I can’t see very well,” Earrin reminded her.

  “There doesn’t seem to be any smoke out that way, though, and Bones hasn’t come back.” He suggested no reasons for the latter fact; Kahvi could make appropriate inferences for herself. If either parent was worried, however, it didn’t show while the work went on.

  Eventually the smoke from beyond the ridge thinned and died, and the frightening thuds of exploding wood ceased to sound. The roof of the jail was a mass of patches, but it was airtight.

  “I think we’re through with it,” Earrin called.

  “I’ll stay up here for a while, though. You can relax inside.”

  “What about the others?” Kahvi asked.

  “All right, I’m sure. The raft is there and looks all right. One of us is going to have to make me a better mask. Maybe if the Hillers don’t need all this shipment — yes, I can see them both coming this way, now. Danna’s in front, and she’d be hanging back if anything much had happened to the raft or the tent, since we told her to take care of them.”“Glass? Raft? You must be the traders,” the occupant of the jail cut in. “No wonder you were so full of outside customs. I should have thought. I must have lost track of the days-you weren’t due for a week yet, were you?”

  “They said two months, which would be the middle of May. I don’t know the exact date — we always seem to get out of step by a day or two — but I don’t think we’re that far off,” the woman said. “How long have you been here? Have they kept you completely out of touch? That’s pretty stiff.”

  “I’m not a jailbird. I’m doing a job, not serving a sentence. I was supposed to be ready for you — they told me by the middle of June. O’Donohugh must have — hmm. I think I know what happened. You’d better have your friends come inside. I do hope you can live through this.”

  III

  Morals, Mostly

  Kahvi felt better. The words were not encouraging, but the young fellow seemed to have some of the courtesy reflexes.

  “Thanks, she replied. “There was no need to have anyone waiting especially for us, though; we could have gone up to the Hill to let you know we were here.”

  “Well, we wanted to know as soon as possible. There are — or maybe were — some projects going on here in Canton and we were using this building lot anyway. I hope you brought as much glass as we asked for; it’s badly needed was.”

  “Was needed? Had projects? What’s changed? And what were the projects? Why did they need so much glass — if you want to tell, of course.”

  “Well, I’m not really sure about the past tense, but the fire you just helped fight off seems to have started very close to where we had things going. Whether anything is left I’ll have to find out. I hope we can still use your cargo.”

  “And that you can still pay for it,” added Kahvi.

  “We can take cre
dit, of course; it’s always nice to have someone who owes us air.”

  “That’s right, there are two of you, aren’t there-your partner is still up on the roof. I suppose you’ll need help in getting the cargo ashore. Should I come now? Or wait — you mentioned other names. Has your group gotten larger?”

  “Not really.” Kahvi began to feel a little tense, and wondered whether he were making some reference to her figure. “It’s been the same group for years, but usually Earrin and I are the only ones to trade. This time the cargo is bigger and the raft harder to move. We don’t really need help in unloading, and you’ll have to restock your air tray anyway before you come out, of course. It was very lucky that only one coal landed in an oxygen tray, wasn’t it?” Kahvi had just realized how incredibly lucky this was, and was wondering how it had been possible to save the roof at all.

  If the boy read anything into her remark, however, his expression showed no sign of it. Kahvi felt her own skin flush, and deliberately slowed her breathing. “We’ll go back and start unloading now, as long as you’re all right here,” she went on as calmly as she could. “Where did I put my mask? There — thanks.

  You’d better fix that tray, and do something about patching tissue. We’ve used up three quarters of what you had.”

  “No hurry about that,” was the reply. “There’s no way we can have another fire for a while — Oh, sorry; that’s another Nomad must-do, isn’t it? Well, maybe you’re right. I’ll take care of them both before I come out to help. Maybe you could bring some glass here right away; I don’t have anything smooth enough to grow good patch tissue on.”

  “All right.” The woman had redonned her mask by this time, but still used spoken words. The Hiller would not understand Nomad gesture speech, still less the symbols used by the Fyn family and Bones.