Astounding Science Fiction, British Edition — page 91: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

MISSION OF GRAVITY the deep sea forms subsist basically on ‘what falls from above. On Mesklin this is true also—but the relative amount of that fall is unbelievable. Animal life swarms in the seas of the giant world from surface to bottom— and the bottom forms, as Lackland already had reason to suspect, were the largest. The Bree sailed into the eastern ocean so gradually that no one could say exactly when the change was made. The wind had picked up day by day until she had normal open-sea use of her sails; the river widened rod by rod and at last mile by mile until the banks were no longer visible from the deck. It was still “‘fresh water’—that is, it still lacked the swarming life that stained practically all the ocean areas in varying tints and helped give the world such a startling appearance from space—but the taste was coming, as sailor after sailor verified to his own great satisfaction. Their course was still east, for a long peninsula barred their way to the south, according to the Flyers. Weather was good, and there would be plenty of warning of any change from the strange beings that watched them so carefully. There was plenty of food still aboard, enough to last easily until they reached the rich areas of the deep seas. The crew was happy. Their captain was satisfied as well. He had learned, partly from his own _ examination and experiment and partly from Lackland’s casual explanations, how it was that a hollow vessel like the canoe could carry so much more weight for its size than could a raft. He was already deep in plans for the building of a large ship—as big or bigger than the Bree—built on the, same principle and able to carry the profits of ten voyages in one. Don- dragmer’s pessimism failed to shake his rosy dream; the mate felt that there must be some reason such vessels 89 were not used by their own people, though he could not say what the reason might be. “It’s too simple,”’ he kept pointing out. “Someone would have thought of it long ago if that’s all there was to it.” Barlennan would simply point astern, where the canoe now followed gayly at the end of a rope, laden with a good half of their food. The mate could not shake his head after the fashion of an old family coachman looking over the new horseless car- riage, but he would certainly have done so if he had possessed a neck. He brightened up when they finally swung southward, and a new thought - struck him. “Watch it sink as soon as we start to get a little decent weight!” he exclaimed. “It may be all right for the creatures of the Rim, but you need a good solid raft where things are normal.”’ “The Flyer says not,” replied Bar- lennan. “You know as well as I do that the Bree doesn’t float any higher here at the Rim than she does at home, or even near the center. The Flyer says it’s because the water weighs less too, which sounds as though it might be. reasonable.” Dondragmer did not answer; he simply glanced, with an expression equivalent to a complacent smile, at the tough wood spring- balance and weight that formed one of the ship’s principal navigating instru- ments. As that weight began to droop he was sure, something that neither his captain nor the distant Flyer had counted on would happen. He did not know what it would be, but he was certain of the fact. The canoe, however, continued to float as the weight slowly mounted. It did not, of course, float as high as it would have on Earth, since liquid methane is less than half as dense as water; its “‘water’’ line, loaded as it was, ran approximately halfway up Cconnicloooks COLA