[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
.The free ends of the tethers were attached to nearby cells.“We’ll open small slashes in the neighboring cells,” Crossbow said.“We’ll let them deflate slowly, to minimize the risk, Then one of us will have to crawl down through a deflated cell and cut through the attachments to the interior cells.With luck, some of the fabric may peel away spontaneously when the other cells expand to take up the deflated space.If we pull on the tethers, we may be able to peel it loose without having to break all of the connecting cells.We’ll have to break at least six, and that represents a lot of lift.If we begin to sink too drastically we may have to go down to the island’s payload and try to lighten it by cutting cables and dumping off mud.”“That won’t be easy,” I objected.“Those connective roots have it all webbed together into one big lump.”“We’ll just have to make the effort,” the neuter said.It stroked its red, feathery gills, which hung limp and moist at its neck.“Let’s put it this way, Arti.If I hit the water, I won’t drown.But I can’t vouch for the rest of you.”“Do you have any spare gills?” Anne asked hopefully.“Yes, but I can’t do the necessary surgery,” said Crossbow with a smile.We all laughed.Poor Anne knew very little about amphibious life.Shading his eyes, Moses pointed into the sunrise.“Look, kittiwakes.” We all turned to look, squinting.A flock of kittiwakes were coming in; we could faintly hear their grating, high-pitched cries.They circled the top of the balloon once, screeching.Their blade-like black wings and long, elegant scissor tails flashed in the yellow morning sunlight.“They’ve come to search the mud for carrion,” Moses said.I looked at him, surprised.He seemed to have adopted the Professor’s detached, Academic tone.Crossbow, on the other hand, paid little attention to the birds but stood with its chin in its hand, vigorously contemplating the problem before it, quite the resolved person of action.It took one of the instruments from its embroidered belt, knelt, and punctured the skin of a neighboring cell.We smelled the escaping gas at once.“We’ll see how this one goes before we attempt the others,” it said authoritatively.Moses, nodding, stepped tentatively off to one side.The first deflation went well and Crossbow quickly punctured the skins of the other five surrounding cells.The cells were naturally spherical; it was only their close packing that had forced them to assume a hexagonal shape.The central cell expanded with the loss of external pressure and slowly rose upward, tugging at the slackened skins of the flabby adjoining cells.We heard a long, muffled shredding sound as the force of its lift began to peel it free from the sticky, clinging skins of the other cells.“Excellent!” Crossbow cried.“I believe it will rip free of the cells beneath it without our having to cut.Quickly, Arti, help me slash it free of these others.”Crossbow and I leapt onto the collapsing fabric of the other cells and began slashing for all we were worth.My section of the fabric ripped completely and once again I tumbled downward into the balloon.I bounced off the resilient interior cells, keeping the presence of mind not to puncture one accidentally with my knife.It smelled terrible.I held my breath and cut away wherever I detected a strain on the fabric.Two of my cameras were caught under the shroud, and my foot was trapped momentarily between the bulging edges of two expanding cells.I wrenched myself free, though, and had the satisfaction of seeing our savior cell rise up slowly from the body of the balloon, held only by shreds of white skin and our four tether lines.I retrieved my cameras and, dancing adroitly so as not to get trapped again, I managed to scramble out of the deep, deflated pit.We heard muffled popping and peeling sounds all around us as the cells rearranged themselves beneath our feet.Anne and Moses were both knocked down.Crossbow cut its way through a thin, flabby shroud and clambered out of the pit to join us.“There,” it said.“That’s fine.We’ll leave what’s left of the skin on it for now.When we cut the rest of the skin the cell will turn upside down, because we’ve attached the tethers to the top.Also, the remaining skin will help distribute the strain.I don’t want to put too much of a strain on our glue bonds.I don’t think it will rip free, but the tension might make the cell lose too much hydrogen.”“I thought I saw something slithering around in the bottom of the pit,” Anne said.Moses nodded.“Ah, yes.That would be the cell slugs.They live in the lining between cells.They eat sap.Isn’t that so, Professor?”Crossbow nodded briefly.“I wish we could have caught a specimen,” Moses said.I looked at Moses sharply.This was too much.The intonation was Crossbow’s, syllable for syllable.Crossbow must have been aware of the mimicry, but it said nothing about it.“Well, that’s that,” Crossbow said cheerily.“It went much more smoothly than I expected.”My ears popped.“Hey, we’re descending,” I said.“Let’s go back to our study,” Crossbow said.“We’ll go down to the island’s payload.We can judge our rate of descent from there, and if necessary we’ll cut a few cables and hope for the best.”Once again, we made the tiresome descent through the center of the balloon.The hundreds of rungs were a trial; they blistered Anne’s hands, and I almost fell again.We grouped together down on the crunchy, crusted mud.The morning sunbeams slanted in, cool under the balloon’s immense bulk.Kittiwakes and shrikes were everywhere, perching on the cables, squabbling over the bodies of parched, bursting fish and filling the air with their cries.A few of them darted curiously over our heads, but most of them ignored us.Probably they had never before seen a human being.Drifting with the tradewind, the balloon sank within fifteen hundred feet of the sea, low enough for us to see gentle swells chasing one another across its gilded surface.Then the heat of the sun inflated the balloon and it rose a little, up to perhaps two thousand feet.We drifted into a thin cloudbank, and dew began to collect on the island’s support cables.Moses Moses dropped to his knees and stared intently at the cracked mud.“Look at this mold growing,” he said.Furry, greenish patches of some kind of mold were growing in the wet valleys between the cracked plates of mud.“Look,” he said wonderingly.“This is life itself.This mold has seized the chance to live, if only for four days.Look how it accepts life, so completely, so gratefully.It has a great deal to teach us, if we will only deign to listen.” He sighed.“When I look at this I feel that I have foolishly wasted my life
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]