The Chronicles of Pern: First Fall (6 page)

“Oh?” Theo never found Jim Tillek boring, especially when he started yarning. She knew that he had sailed every sea on old Earth and some on the newer colony planets, as well, in between his interstellar voyages as the captain of a drone freighter. Over the past few days she’d had a chance to admire the qualities of a man she’d barely chatted with before. Now, keeping as watchful an eye on their convoy as he did, she listened with pleasure as he warmed to his tale.

“Half an army was pinned down on a beach, strafed by enemy aircraft, and likely all would have been killed there if the small-craft skippers of that era hadn’t saved ’em. Dunkirk, that was the name of the beach they were trapped on, with safety across a channel a mere thirty-four kilometers away.”

“Thirty-four klicks?” Theo repeated in surprise, the dark thick arcs of her eyebrows rising. “Anyone could swim that.”

Jim grinned at her. “Some
athletes
did, sort of a rite of passage trial or for the helluvit, but not three hundred thousand troops in full battle gear. And—” He waggled his finger at her. “—no dolphins.”

“But dolphins have been around for yonks!”

“Not as we know them, Theo. Let’s see, where was I?”

Theo scrunched down on the cockpit seat, grinning at the subtle reprimand. His face had a lot of sun wrinkles, which made him look older, but his body in the tank top and shorts was lean, fit, and tanned. As usual on board, his feet were bare, showing long, prehensile toes. Once or twice, she’d seen him hold a line tight with just his toes.

“Ah, yes, the Germanics had three hundred thousand British troops pinned down on the sands of Dunkirk, which was on the European continent, and since the Brits had no wish to spend the rest of their lives in a prisoner-of-war camp, they needed to be evacuated across the channel to their homeland, England.”

“How’d they get across the channel in the first place?”

Jim shrugged. He had broad, bony shoulders, and only a sprinkling of hair on his chest, which she preferred to the full pelt she’d seen on so many other men. “Troopships convoyed ’em over when the hostilities broke out, but those ports were already in the hands of the Germanics. One crucial problem with Dunkirk was that the beach was very shallow for a good distance before it shelved off into deep water. No proper docking or wharves for the big-draft ships to tie up at. Only a long wooden pier, which the Germanics strafed with their warplanes. Men were so desperate that they waded out, swimming the last part to climb up nets put down the sides of the ships to help ’em board. Then, someone had the bright idea of getting all available craft from the island, especially pleasure craft with low drafts, so they could sail further in to the beach to pick up troops. Records have it that even sailing dinghies, no more than three meters long, made the passage successfully. And not just once but time and again until the crews succumbed to exhaustion. But the three hundred thousand men were all evacuated. Quite a feat of seamanship and courage.”

“It’s no thirty-four klicks of a channel we have to navigate, Jim Tillek, but the coastline of half a world,” Theo said with some acerbity.

“Yes, but we don’t have a war going on around us,” Jim said cheerfully.

“We don’t?” Theo asked and gestured over her shoulder to the east, signifying the menace of Thread.

“You’ve got a point there,” Jim admitted. “Though it’s not a people-shooting war. But I believe in starting every journey with a high heart and in good spirits—and would you send Dart after that fool sloop with the spotted sail? Where do they think they’re going? They’re to tack right back into position.”

He finished his remarks to empty air, for Theo had dived as neatly as her dolphin could over the safety rail and into the water, to be towed swiftly toward the miscreant vessel by Dart.

It was amazing what heights the human spirit could rise to, Jim thought as he did a visual check through his binoculars. Theo and Dart reached their destination, and he could almost hear the blistering reprimand she was issuing. She had her arms over the rim of the craft, gesticulating to leave no doubt in the young skipper’s mind as to where he had erred. He watched as she trod water, one hand lightly on the dolphin’s melon, while the little craft tacked back in line. When he saw her begin to swim back toward the
Cross,
Dart skipping alongside her, he put the binoculars down.

Squinting to the fore of the flotilla, he could see the pennon on the mast of the five-meter yawl that had been put at Ezra Keroon’s disposal as convoy leader. Ezra hadn’t much actual sea experience, but he was a superb navigator through any medium. Jim had himself done the sea charts on this coastline and knew the waters intimately. There were no reefs or unexpected dangers to cause problems for the inexperienced. As long as no ships ventured too far out where the Great Eastern Current could catch them, sea hazards were minimal. Once they got to Key Largo, every one of them would be seasoned enough for the open-water run across both the Great Currents to the safety of Fort.

The coast beyond Sadrid to Boca was not that well known to him, but he was counting on the fishermen at Malay and Sadrid, and on Ju Adjai Benden at Boca, to be familiar with local problems. The sailors at Key Largo Hold had also done a fair bit of charting in their coastal waters. Barring the weather, they should make it, no matter how slowly.

And the weather, he thought, leaning forward to tap the barometer, could be an acute problem. Volcanic eruptions played havoc with weather conditions. There had already been some freak winds, squalls, and higher-than-normal tides, but Kahrain Cove had sheltered them from the worst. They would probably arrive in the North just in time for the ash fallout that was already beginning to filter into the upper air currents to be pushed around the planet. He wondered if the volcanic activity would have any effect on Threadfall. If one had to find some good out of bad, that would be the option he’d pick—if he had one.

Two hours later he had to give the orders for the small craft to land and the bigger ships to hove to and anchor in a cove. Winds were picking up, erratic in direction, and therefore especially dangerous to novice sailors, and so full of ash and grit as to make visibility poor.

If he and Ezra were disappointed by the progress they had made that first day out of Kahrain Cove, they sloughed off queries with any number of logical explanations. No reason to deflate the good morale of the expedition. The early day did give them a chance to check all the cargoes and work on the problem of protecting the ships from Thread. Most of the forty pleasure boats were constructed of fiberglass, with plastic masts and booms, so decks and hulls were Threadproof. But canvas sails and some varieties of sheets and line were not. Two of the colony’s plastics experts had spent their first day afloat designing rigid plastic sail covers that were Threadproof, but they still had to solve the problem of how to protect the people on the smaller craft, some of which did not have enclosed cabin space in which to take shelter. There was also not a sufficient number of breathers to allow passengers to dive under their hulls and remain there during Threadfall.

So that evening, Ezra and Jim had more conferences on that problem, while all around them, the ill-assorted sailors of their convoy gathered around campfires to cook the fish they had caught during the day. But it had been a very busy day, and by nightfall, there were very few who hadn’t rolled up early in their sleeping bags.

An oily, ashy drizzle and light winds made the next day’s sailing longer and certainly dirtier. But they managed to pull in to Paradise River’s wide mouth to anchor before darkness fell.

Jim and Ezra called a meeting to discuss the possibility of splitting the flotilla into several sections to make better progress. The larger ships were constantly having to reef canvas, even to drag sea anchors, to keep from outdistancing the smaller ones. Of course, the cargoes that were destined to be stored here at Paradise River would be off-loaded and the remainder more evenly distributed. The more precarious rafts would be abandoned, having served their purpose. The dolphineers were grateful: their teams had bravely tried to keep their assigned positions in the convoy, and the strain was showing in galls and swollen flesh.

The decision was made that, as soon as the unloading was done, Ezra would lead the larger craft forward at whatever speed they and two pods of escort dolphins could maintain, while Jim followed with the slower, smaller vessels and the larger number of dolphin escorts. The smallest of the sailing dinghies would be dismantled or towed.

The bad weather persisted and the seas became too rough for all but the most experienced sailors, so the Paradise River Hold continued to host them.

On the plus side, the plastics experts, Andi Gomez and Ika Kashima, used the layover to complete manufacture of the sail covers, and doors that could cover open cabin fronts. And Ika came up with an ethnic solution to the problem of protecting the nearly five hundred passengers and crew from Threadfall: plastic headgear, in a wide conical shape, made with wide weals and outward sloping sides—wide enough to cover most shoulders—with a high crown, to fit on the head, tied under the chin. Once the people were in the water, buoyed by the compulsory life vests everyone wore, these conical “coolie hats” would deflect Thread into the water, where it would drown or be consumed by the fish that invariably arrived wherever Thread fell into the seas. Even the dolphins were known to partake of what they considered an unusual food.

The Paradise River contingent thought Ika’s cone hat a definite improvement over the sheets of metal they were used to using for protection if they were caught out in Fall. Overcome by all the praise, the slender Eurasian insisted that she could not take credit for the design.

“Well, it’s a bloody good adaptation of a—what did you call it?—coolie hat,” Andi said stoutly, “and it’ll work. Won’t be too hard to turn out once we set the matrix for the design.” And she turned back to that task.

“We’re lucky we have people of such differing backgrounds,” Jim told the embarrassed Ika kindly. “You never can tell when something as simple as straw hats from rice paddies on Earth can turn out to be life-saving on Pern. Good thinking, Ika! Cheer up, child. You’ve just saved our lives!”

She managed to send him a shy smile before she retreated once again, but her husband, Ebon Kashima, strutted about the camp as if he had thought of the gear.

“The next problem will be getting our brave sailors to overcome fear of being
out
in Threadfall, and having it bang down on their heads,” Ezra said a little grimly, “no matter how clever the hat they’re wearing.”

“Look, Cap’n,” said one of the Sadrid fishermen. “Push comes to shove and Thread starts falling on you and water’s the only safe place, they’ll jump in. I sure as hell did that time we got caught out in one of the first Falls. ’Sides, there’re an awful lot of fire-lizards flitting about. Between them and the wild ones that congregate whenever there’s Fall, I doubt much Thread’ll hit any hat.”

“A little practical psychology,” Jim said, “and us as good examples, and they’ll take to it. They’ll have little alternative.”

“There’s that, too,” Ezra said bleakly.

“We’ll start some proper chatter where it seems needed,” Ben said, nodding to the other dolphineers. They wandered off to start their brainwashing.

By the time coolie hats were extruded and ready to be passed around, most of the flotilla was willing to accept the measure.

“I’d rather be in a sled with a flamethrower,” one of the barge mates confided to a friend within Jim’s hearing.

“Yeah, but the barge has that slant fore and aft. All we gotta do is hide under that and we’ll be safe enough.”

Jim and Ezra issued an order that anyone caught without life vest and coolie would be subjected to severe discipline and, if they held any rank, demotion. They also ordered everyone to work a two-hour shift helping produce the protective gear.

As it happened, all the stores were housed and accounted for, and nearly two-thirds of the necessary Thread shields completed before the weather cleared, so the two sections were able, after all, to set off again together. But the bigger ships, with more sail, made the most of the following wind and soon outdistanced the slower craft.

“More like the boat people,” Jim remarked to Theo as he tacked back down the strung-out line of his charges.

“Boat people?”

“Hmmm, yes. War victims in the twentieth century. They tried to leave their country—Asians, they were—in the most incredibly unseaworthy craft. Junks and sampans, they were called.” He shook his head. “Totally unsuitable. Many died trying to escape. Many arrived at their destinations only to be turned back.”

“Turned back?” Theo was outraged.

“I don’t remember the historical-political situation at the time. It was before Earth was really united by outward-bound goals. I don’t think a one of their craft was as good as the worst of these.”

Theo let out a sigh, pointed to starboard where one of the four-meter slops was flying a distress flag, and dove overboard. When she surfaced, Dart was right beside her, ready to tow her to the crippled ship. Jim entered the matter in his recorder. Broken sheet, he thought, noting the way the boom swung. Lordee, would they have enough line to see them through the constant breakages? He’d better hold another splicing lesson tonight.

“Ah, it was the Heyerdahl expeditions I was trying to remember,” he told himself, “only he was doing it deliberately in primitive craft he’d built himself. Not the same thing as this at all.” He must remember to tell Theo. He grinned. He enjoyed yarning at her, because she really listened. Occasionally, she responded with stories of her days as a pilot. He rather thought she preferred being a dolphineer, or maybe she was just the sort of person who would make the most of what she had.

Too bad this feat will only be known to us Pernese, he thought. Our Second Crossing: in many ways far more remarkable than the spatial crossing of fifteen light-years in three elderly but suitable spaceships to reach this deserted corner of the Sagittarian sector.