Applegate Falls

Rain lashed at the blimp as it approached the landing field at Lovell Station Four. Surrounded by trees, it would have presented a trickier landing problem than Grissom normally, but the weather made it worse as Jack and Russell fought the wind and tried to see clearly through the deluge. It was late spring, and the weather was typical, but forecasts predicted the storm would pass during the night.

But that would be the next day. First, they had to get the blimp close enough to the mooring mast without hitting the trees around the boundary, hampered by poor visibility and buffeting from a constantly changing wind.

They could see a half-dozen people arrayed before the mooring mast, waiting to help in tying down the blimp. As they got closer to the ground, the hazy figures resolved into recognizable people, standing with faces upturned toward the blimp, using their hands to keep the rain out of their eyes. Russell threw out the mooring ropes as Jack tried to position the blimp next to the mast, but it wasn’t working. Every time he got close, a gust of wind blew him away, and he had to struggle to stay out of the trees. One man on the ground grabbed a rope but had to let go or be dragged into the air as an updraft lifted the blimp twenty feet.

“Get more air into the ballonets,” Jack told Russell. “Maybe we’ll be more stable if we get heavier. And tell the people on the ground we’ll be coming in lower. I don’t want to knock anyone down.”

Russell instinctively looked at his arm, long since healed from the injuries he had sustained on Progress‘s first voyage. He worked the controls to fill the ballonets and used the radio to tell the person coordinating the ground crew. Jack maneuvered the blimp up to the mast again, this time from an altitude of barely ten feet, keeping its nose pointed slightly downward. A gust of wind grabbed the blimp, pushing it toward the mast, and Jack quickly reversed the engines. The blimp hit the mast with a loud thump, and Jack could see sudden fright on the face of a man at the top of the mast. The man recovered quickly, got a grip on the nose rope, and attached it to the top. Another gust had the blimp straining to get away, but the rope kept it captive while the rest of the ground crew secured the other ropes.

As they got out of the blimp’s gondola, the ground crew gathered around them. The man who had been on the mast climbed down and joined them, a big grin on his face. “That was fun. And we get to do it again tomorrow?” He held out his hand. “Mason Reiner.”

Jack took his hand, and they shook. “Jack Applegate and Russell Chandri.” He pointed to Russell with his free hand.

“Welcome to Lovell Station Four.” As Mason shook hands with Russell, he looked over Jack’s shoulder at an approaching woman. “Oh-oh, here comes the boss.”

Jack turned. Most people were trying to shield themselves at least a little from the wind and rain, but the woman didn’t notice as she strode toward them through the mud. Jack estimated her age as about seventy Pitcairn years and deduced that this was Madelyn Menzies, the settlement leader.

His deduction was confirmed when she introduced herself and immediately took charge, leading them across the field to the cluster of buildings that made up Lovell Station Four. They entered a building where towels and a table and chairs were waiting for them.

“We’re a little short on accommodations here,” Madelyn told them as they dried themselves as well as they could. Her tone was matter-of-fact, with no trace of apology in it. “Mason, who you already met, will take in one of you, and the Gallagher’s volunteered to take the other one.”

Next to Madelyn, Mason Reiner and another man nodded to Jack and Russell. The second man looked at Jack. “You’re Jason Applegate’s son, aren’t you?”

“Yes.” Jack looked at the man. He didn’t have the squat look of a native, and he looked a little young to have been on Seeker, but there were family members on the starship. The name Gallagher didn’t sound familiar to him, but most of the Seeker crew had settled in Grissom.

“My father often speaks of him. I’m Braden Gallagher, Brody Gallagher’s son. My father lives in Grissom, so Doctor Applegate probably doesn’t remember him.”

Jack offered his hand, and they shook. “My father doesn’t talk about Seeker very often. You were born here?”

Braden grinned. “I’m sure I don’t look young enough for that. No, I was one of the children Seeker brought. Why don’t you come stay with us, and I can tell you a few stories about the voyage that you probably haven’t heard.”

“That’s fine with me. I’m a Late, though. Russell here is an Early, and we planned to keep to our usual schedules as much as possible.”

“That works great, then. My wife and I are Lates, and Mason’s family are Earlies. I’m sure you’re hungry, and my wife will have dinner ready for us.”

Clouds still filled the sky the next morning as Jack left the Gallagher home, but there was no rain, and breaks in the overcast appeared in the west. He met Russell in Madelyn’s office, the building they had gone to when they first arrived.

Russell was standing at a table with satellite photographs spread across it. “I found something interesting. Follow the stream down from the mine. There’s a fuzzy spot here, about a hundred miles southeast of the mine. Then the stream continues down the mountainside.”

Jack put his finger on the spot. “Here? Small for fog. You’re thinking mist?”

“Right. A waterfall. If it’s big enough, maybe we could use it for power.”

“Not for smelting, I wouldn’t think. It couldn’t be that big. Maybe for a crushing plant, though. We wouldn’t even have to convert it to electricity for that.”

Russell nodded. “We would still have to do some preliminary breaking down at the mine. We’ll be getting out chunks of rock too big to carry that far. But it’s worth checking out.”

Half an hour later, they went out to the blimp, accompanied by Mason, Braden, and Madelyn. While Jack did a last-minute briefing of the ground crew, Russell got on the radio and asked Isaac for the coordinates of the suspected waterfall.

“That area is about twenty miles off the obvious route,” Isaac reported. “I didn’t get details there.”

“Can you check it out?”

“I’m on the other side of the planet. I can get detailed data on that area in about six hours when I’m overhead again. Will that be good enough?”

“Sure. It will probably take us fifteen hours to get to that area, anyway.”

“I will contact you when I have something.”

Next, Russell contacted Grissom, catching John just before he left the Town Hall, and passed on Progress‘s status. Then they were ready to go.

Once they were in the air and away from Lovell Station Four, Jack got comfortable and went to sleep while Russell flew the blimp northwest into the mountains. At first, the terrain was relatively gentle, and Russell confirmed that the chief work would be clearing the forest along the route.

After an hour’s travel, the hills became higher and more rugged. Russell kept the blimp as low as he dared, talking constantly in a low voice to Isaac about what he was seeing. Isaac stored Russell’s notes for later use and added positional information calculated from Russell’s observations and data from the communications satellites. Later, when Asimov was overhead, Isaac would track the blimp more accurately.

After about seven hours, Jack woke up and took over the piloting. Russell made a cold meal for both of them, and they talked briefly about what Russell had seen so far. Isaac interrupted them to report that the air over the location they had given was unusually high in water vapor, and more detailed photography did strongly suggest a sizable waterfall. Isaac couldn’t send them the photographs, but it sent them to Grissom for review.

An hour into Late Day, John contacted them. “I looked at the data Isaac sent me. Looks like a good find to me. Doesn’t look very high, but it probably doesn’t need to be. I’m getting data from Isaac on stamping mill design, and we’ll see what you find when you get there.”

“We should be there in about four hours,” Russell replied. “One of us, probably Jack, will get back to you. I plan to be sleeping by then.”

“Okay. I take it everything is going all right?”

“Your weather forecast was right on. How does it look for tonight?”

“Much the same as when you left. Some rain is possible at the end of the day. You know how the weather is this time of year. You shouldn’t have any trouble, though. Just make sure you stay a little higher after dark.”

They sailed on. After three more hours of light over increasingly rough terrain, Jack estimated they were about thirty miles from the waterfall. He maneuvered the blimp eastward until he found the stream flowing down the mountain from the mine. The terrain looked as rough there as to the west, and he wanted to confirm impressions the stream wouldn’t be navigable. He brought the blimp lower and took some pictures, but  although the stream was large enough to be called a small river, it was also white water, surging through a rock-strewn bed, usually between steep canyon walls. It would probably get quieter as it approached the Lovell, but by that time, it wouldn’t be much use for transportation.

He told Isaac that as part of the survey notes. “Humans on Earth engage in a sport called white water rafting,” Isaac told him.

Jack looked down at the rapids speculatively. “I’ll keep that in mind. Maybe someday when I want a creative way to commit suicide.”

Isaac didn’t respond, and Jack assumed it knew he had been joking. It was interesting how the computer seemed to understand humor and even use it after a fashion when it had trouble with so much else. “Isaac, do you have a sense of humor?”

“Not in the way humans do, but I try in the hope it will make me seem more human and ease my relations with humans.”

“Can you explain how you try?”

“I have ample material on human humor in my data, and I have attempted to analyze it. I don’t think I could create a true joke, although I have many that I could use. Based on my analysis, I try for a ‘wry remark.’”

“I think I see. Sometimes your voice makes it difficult to know when you’re making a ‘wry remark,’ but you still do it well.”

“Thank you. I can also use plays on words using an analysis based on evaluating multiple meanings. Shall I give you examples?”

Jack grinned. “Not right now. I’m too busy piloting the blimp, and I wouldn’t want to be distracted. I’m sure they’re hilarious, though.”

Looking ahead, he thought he could see a cloud of mist rising a little above the landscape. Beyond a curve in the canyon walls, he saw the waterfall, about a mile ahead of him, not as high as Armstrong Falls in the Fredericks, but much broader. Jack throttled the engine down as low as he dared, and he thought he could hear the water cascading down to the rocks below the falls.

When he got closer, Jack took more pictures, noted the drop was about forty feet, probably high enough to use for ore crushing. Smiling, he told Isaac that he was naming it Applegate Falls. They would likely build there another settlement, and he thought that Applegate Falls would be a good name for the settlement as well.

Past the waterfall, the land rose more steeply, the forest thinned, and the stream narrowed. Jack increased the blimp’s altitude to keep well above the terrain. Two hours later, Russell woke, and they ate another cold meal. Russell then used the rest of the period to review Jack’s notes. When Isaac played back Jack’s naming of the falls, he looked up at Jack quizzically, but Jack just shrugged. “I saw it first.”

Russell chuckled. “Fine. In that case, I get to name the mine site. Chandri Mine has a nice ring to it.”

“Shall I log that?” Isaac asked.

Isaac’s suggestion startled him, but Russell recovered quickly. “Sure. At least the mine name will cover Diego and me.”

“As long as you’re right about what’s there, and it doesn’t turn out to be Russell’s Folly,” Jack retorted.

“Noted under both Russell and Diego Chandri,” Isaac said.

Russell looked at the radio and then back at Jack. Jack shrugged. “Don’t look at me. I can’t tell when Isaac is joking and when it’s serious.”

“I am always serious,” Isaac protested. It paused a beat. “Of course, to a comedian, joking is serious.”

“So you’re a comedian now?” Jack said.

“Grissom named one robot I speak through after a comedian. Since I’m the brains behind Sonica, Grissom must think so.”

Jack started to point out how illogical that was, but stopped in astonishment. The conversation was, as much as anything else, proof Isaac had gone beyond its programming. Russell must have realized what he was thinking because he was shaking his head in bemusement.

Nineteen hours later, after completing the round-trip to the mine, they made a moonlight landing at Lovell Station Four.