John Brunner - Repairman of Cyclops

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Repairmen of Cyclops
by
John Brunner
The sky rang with the reverberation of fierce white
sunlight like the interior of a blue drum. Wind hot as the
breath of a furnace teased the silver ocean into ripples,
and the ripples shattered the sun's image into ablazing
pathway of diamond fragments. Itching with sweat,
aching with tension, Justin Kolb had to narrow his eyes
even behind his wholeface visor because the response-
limit of the glass was exceeded if he turned his head
towards that glistening track over the water and the
opacity curve took a sudden dive towards complete
blankness.
Maddeningly, it was to sunward that he had caught
the first wing-glints.
He had expected that the sight of the Jackson's buz-
zards would crystallise his formless tension into the old
familiar excitement, re-unite mind and body into the effi-
cient combination, as much weapon as person, which was
Juson Kolb at peak operational efficiency. He had been
trying for so long to get away on his own like this, on
the hunter's trail which now had to make do for his old,
preferred pastimes, that the strain of habituation to wait-
ing had soured his keen anticipation of the chase.
Only till I see the buzzards, he had promised himself.
And then
But he'd seen the buzzards at last, when he had half
decided he was too far north even at this season, two
days past midsummer, and the instant of thrill had
beenan instant. Now he was back in the slough of
dreary awareness which had plagued him the whole of
yesterday and the whole of the day before. He was con-
scious of suffocating heat, of blinding brightness, of
prickling perspiration, of cramp from keeping the skim-
mer level and aligned despite the tag of the waves. His
hands were slippery on the controls, and the hard butt of
his harpoon-gan seemed to take up twice as much room
on the skimmer's deck as it usually did.
Briefly, he shut his eyes, wishing with all his force that
somehow time could turn back and he could be free to
return to space.
Cyclops, though, was a relatively poor world. It could
not support luxury spaceflight. Out there, a man had to
be productivemining asteroids, servicing solar power
relays, doing some clock-around job with the absolute
concentration of machinery.
What the hell am I now? A gigolo.
The thought passed. True or not, he was at least able
to indulge this much of his thirst for excitement and
challenge; if he had taken any other of the courses open
to him, he would have been drudging away this glorious
summer in a city or on a farm or in some squalid fish-
ing-port, pestered continually by the demands of other
people, by the need to stack up work-credits, by holes in
his shoes or leaks in his roof.
Even her high-and-mightiness is preferable to that. ..
He biinked. The wing-glints had come again, and this
time remained in view instead of vanishing into the blur
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of heat-haze and shimmery reflection along the skyline.
His pulse beat faster as he began to count: five, six
eight, ten, at least a dozen and possibly more.
Name of the cosmos, but it must be a giantf
For one moment, uncharacteristic alarm filled him. He
had come deliberately to this northern extreme of the
wolfsharks* range, because those that beat a path of
slaughter more than a hundred miles from the equatorial
shallows which were their customary habitat were cer-
tain to be the largest and greediest specimens, and after
his long impatient chafing in Frecity he had felt nothing
less than a monster would compensate him.
But seeing a dozen or more buzzards hovering was ft
shock.
It was perhaps the most characteristic sight on Cy-
clops: Jackson's buzzards, swift, cniel-taloned, steely-
winged, on the track of a wolfshark, which killed for
savage delight and not for hunger, so that even the mon-
strous appetites of the birds were easily glutted by its
gore-leaking victims. At this time of year, nearer the
equator, one could look out over the sea and espy as
many as five or six groups of the carrion-eaters follow-
ing the blood-smeared killers, for the ocean teemed with
'life.
Yet it was rare to see more than six buzzards to every
wolfshark. By twos and threes, they would sate them-
selves and flap heavily away, while others took their
place, the total number in the sky remaining roughly
constant. And there were reasons why those that roamed
furthest north were followed usually only by two or
three buzzards: first, the sea offered fewer victims and
hence less carrion; second, the birds were still feeding
their young at this time of year, and could not wander
too far from their breeding-mats, the vast raft-like as-
semblies of Cyclops kelp which occurred only in a nar-
row belt around the planet's centre.
Nonetheless, here it was: a wolfshark so big, so fast,
and so murderous that a hundred miles away from home
it was killing in quantities great enough to tip the bal-
ance in the buzzards' dim minds on the side of greed
rather than loyalty to their offspring.
He pursed his lips and eased his harpoon-gun closer to
the firing-notch out in the forward gunwale of the skim-
mer. Would one shot do the )ob? Would it be better to
load first with an unlined harpoon, to weaken the killer,
before risking a shot with line attached and the conse-
quent danger of being dragged to the bottom? Had this
enormous beast been attacked and escaped beforeif it
had, how many times? The more often, the warier it
would be of an approaching skimmer, and the more
likely" it would be to attack even if there was easy prey
closer to hand.
He weighed possibilities with half his mind, while with
the other half he reviewed the area where he found him-
self.
This was the water-hemisphere of Cyclops, insofar as
the differentiation was meaningful. It was a shallow-sea
planetits moon being rather small, and incapable of
raising large tides either in the cnistal material or in the
oceans, although its sun exerted considerable tidal influ-
ence.
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The shallowness of the sea, combined with a total vol-
ume of water close to the average for Class A planets
(those on which human beings could survive, eating
some of the vegetation and at least a few of .the native
animals) meant that the dry-land area was chopped up
into small sections. The other half of the planet boasted
some quite sizeable islands, and even a quasi-conrinent
consisting of a score of large islands linked by isthmuses.
This side was sparsely inhabited, and the largest island
within hundreds of miles was officially not even part of
Cyclops, but a repair and recreation base for the Corps
Galactica.
A certain amount of fishing; a certain amount of
scrap-reclamation; some terrafarms on islands isolated
enough to be worth maintaining as pure-human ecologi-
cal units against the risk of drifting seeds and wandering
fauna from the Cyclops-normal islands around them
that was the sum of human engagement with this hemi-
sphere, apart from solar and tidal power installations
operating with a minimum of manned supervision.
Kolb hesitated. Then he gave a harsh laugh. Was he
going to let the risk of dying alone and far from rescue
prevent him from going after this record-breaking wolf-
shark? He would never be able to face his image in the
mirror again.'
In any case, out in space he had faced death not
hundreds, but hundreds of thousands of miles from the
nearest other humans.
His mind darkened briefly. He never cared to recall
the circumstances that had brought him back from space
to a planet-bound existence, and forbidden him to com-
bine his lust for danger with valuable work. There was
nothing of value to anyone but himself in this single-
handed hunting; men had shared Cyclops with wolf-
sharks for long enough to determine the limits within
which they could be a nuisance, and if the necessity
arose, the species was culled efficiently and with preci-
sion by teams working from the air.
In fact, thought Kolb greyly, there's damned little
value to anybody in anything I've done with my life
lately. Least of all to me...
Slowly, as the wing-glints came closer, following a line
that would pass him within some four or five miles and
if extended would eventually approach the island where
the Corps Galactica maintained its repair base, a kind of
muted exultation filled him. He could see now that the
buzzards were too full already to make more than token
swoops on what the wolfshark killed, yetas though ad-
miring the energy of the beastthey none of them made
to flap back to the south and their breeding-mats.
It'll break all the records. I never even heard of such a
giant!
He put aside the unlined harpoon which his hand had
automatically sought for the first shot. With fingers as
exact as a surgeon's, he loaded a harpoon with line at-
tached, and laid the gun in its firing-notch.
Then he closed his left hand on the control levers, and
without a tremor fed power to the reactor.
The skimmer leapt up on its planes with a shriek loud
enough to startle a wolfshark at twice this range, and in-
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stantly the wheeling buzzards disgorged the last food
they had eaten and climbed a safe hundred feet into the
sky. Just audible over the thrum of power from his
craft, Kolb heard their whickering cries, like the neigh-
ing of frightened horses.
And one of his questions was answered, anyway. This
wolfshark had been attacked before, often enough to
recognise a skimmer for the danger it represented. It for-
got its business of stitching a line of destruction across
the peaceful ocean, and spun around in the water to con-
front the fragile boat. It lowered its tail and spread its
fans, and its head rose to the surface.
Kolb's self-possession wavered, so that he had to cling
desperately to his unverbalised decision: it 'doesn't matter
if I die or not! Thinking of it as huge, and seeing how
huge it was, were two different things.
How big, then? Fifty feet from fan-tip to fan-tip, os-
cillating in the water like a manta ray, but having a ta-
pered body which was all keel for the muscles driving
those fans, perfectly streamlined; a mere twitch, a single
shrug of those muscles would hurl it torpedo-swift on
anything else which swam the waters of Cyclops, and
jaws which could open to engulf a man would clamp
serrated rows of fangs into, and through, the victim. The
bite killed, and the Idller forgot. In summer, it was never
hungry. It swallowed what its )aws held, and that suf-
ficed until the next kill, minutes later.
Kolb silenced the yammering alarms in his mind and
lined up the sights of his gun rock-steady on the centre
of the maw.
And then, with the distance closing to two hundred
yards, a hundred and fifty, there came the boom.
It rocked the skimmer. It starded the wolfshark. It was
the noise of a Corps Galactica spacecraft braking at the
edge of atmosphere to put down at the repair base.
By a reflex not even the danger of death could over-
rule, ex-spaceman Justin Kolb glanced up, and the sun
shone full on his wholeface visor, triggering and over-
loading the glare response, so that he was blind. He cried
out, his hand closing on the trigger of his gun. The har-
poon whistled wide of a target, and the wolfshark
charged.
During the flight Maddalena Santos had mostly- sat
staring at nothing, turning over and over in her mind the
decision which now confronted her: to stay on, or not,
in the Patrol Service.
Three other passengers were aboardpersonnel from
an airless Corps base further out towards the limits of
the explored galaxy, on rotating local leave and very ex-
cited about it. Two of them were men. The fact that
these men looked at her once only told her something
about the effect of the last twenty years on her appear-
ance.
It was one thing to know that she was assured of an-
other two centuries of life. It was another to realise on
this first visit to civilisation in so long a time how deep
the impact of two decades on a barbarian world had
gone.
She was assured of her longevity by the Patrol's pay-
scale; in a galaxy where the older worlds were so rich it
literally made no difference whether a given individual
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worked or not, it required either accidental dedication or
a tempting bait to enlist volunteers for the necessary
drudgery of governmental service.
Not that you can really call it government, Maddalena
reminded herself listlessly. It's more like herding cattle.
And lazy cattle, at that.
The other branches of government service paid at
lower rates; only the Patrol paid ten-for-one in the
unique currency of life.
She had served twenty years as an on-planet agent,
among stinking barbarians lost in a mud-wallow, and she
was entitledif she chose to take it here and nowto a
guaranteed two centuries of comfortable, healthy life,
anywhere she chose. She could even go clear back to
Earth, for she had been born there.
Wistfully, she looked at the black star-spangled back-
drop of space, wondering what had happened on the
mother world in the period she had been away.
She had been so optimistic . . . Right at the beginning
of her career, when she was making out so badly in the
Corps that she risked not even being promoted lieutenant
from her initial probationer statusand hence losing for-
ever her chance at longevity-paymentshe had saved ev-
erything and indeed acquired some small reputation by a
successful coup on a barbarian planet: one of the isolated
Zarathustra Refugee Planets where fugitives had survived
after fleeing the hell of the Zarathustra nova more than
seven centuries previous.
But when she was offered a post as an on-planet agent,
supervising and watching the progress of these stranded
outcasts of humanity, since she was not permitted to re-
turn to the world where she had stirred up such a to-do,
she had had to pick almost at random from the existing
four or five vacancies.
And she had realised quite shortly after being assigned
her post, in which the minimum stay was twenty years,
that she had chosen wrong.
It had seemed that something was going to happen on
the planet she selecteda transition from the typical
mud-grubbing peasant level where many of the refugees
had got stuck, .to an expanding phase of incipient civilisa-
tion, with some industrialisation and a great deal of
cross-cultural influence: fascinating material to study at
first-hand.
But that occurrence depended on the survival of an
organisational genius who had inherited the headship of a
strategically sited city-state. And within a month of her
arrival, one of his jealous rivals assassinated him and
seized power, condemning the planet to at least one more
generation of stagnancy.
She was absolutely forbidden to interfere. And, having
to sit helplessly- by and watch nothing happen, she had
grown so bored she hardly dared think about it.
Now was time for leave, and reassignment. Her
"death" had been arranged; her successor had been
briefed and was even now aboard the Patrol ship which
would land him with utter secrecy to take over his care-
fully prepared r61e in the local society. . . and she was
on her way to Cyclops, a planet she had never conceived
she might want to visit.
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Yet she had welcomed the reasonless order to come
here before proceeding on leave. The delay gave her
time to arrive at the decision she had postponed so long:
stay on, ask for transfer to some lower-paying )ob, or
resign?
She thought enviously of Gus Langenschmidt, the Pa-
trol Major who had maintained the beat including her
assigned world when she first went there; he was aging,
greying, even running to fat when she last saw him, yet
because he could think of no better purpose to which to
devote his accrued longevity, he was continuing far be-
yond the maximum service-time which qualified for ten-
to-one pay. Five centuries was the limit of credit Fifty
years in the Patrol.
More than the total of years Fve yet lived, Maddalena
reflected. How is Gus? Where is he? It would have been
easier to endure my job if I'd .known he was still going
to call two or three times a yearbut they 'pulled him off
his beat to do something else when he topped the limit,
and I could never like his successor so well.
The communicators announced the imminence of
planetfall. The whisper of air began on the hull, like the
drumming of scores of marching feet. Maddalena leaned
back and closed her eyes, struggling once more with the
irresoluble problem. She scarcely noticed the actual land-
ing period, although her fellow passengers were chatter-
ing and joking and exchanging snippets of information
about Cyclops. A rough world, they thought it was.
Rough world.' Maddalena echoed silently. These soft-
handed chair-warmers should go where I've just come
from.'
And yet...
Her mind drifted back two decades on the instant. "A
predatory kind of world"that was the description she
had been given when it was first learned Cyclopeans
were behind the interference with a ZRP which she had
cancelled out by an inspired improvisation.
What did they want her here for, anyway? Why in
the galaxy had that message come through at the Corps
base where she had been trying to decide whether to go
all the way home to Earth for her leave-year, instructing
that she be sent to Cyclops on the next available flight?
The answer turned up the moment the locks were
opened on the landing-groundor rather, pontoon. Cy-
clops, having so much water, had correspondingly little
dry ground available for parking spaceships. More than si
dozen vessels were in view from the seat in which she
still sat listlessly although the others had risen excitedly
to await permission to step outside. The gawky shapes of
cranes, the abstract formations of hulls in process of cut-
ting up for scrap, the clean bright rails of overhead gan-
tries, wove webs of metal across the blinding blue
background of a summer sky.
She had not expected to find such bright light; the pri-
mary of the world she had left was cooler than Earth's,
but that of Cyclops was whiter and hotter.
A man in summer undress uniform, hair clipped close
and indicating that he was called on to fly space where
long hair was forbidden because it was dangerous inside
a helmet, hauled himself dexterously through the lock
even before the mobile gangvroy trundled into position.
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He peered down the shadowy aisle of the passenger
cabin.
"Senior Lieutenant Santos?" he inquired.
Maddalena stirred and got up.
"The base commandant is waiting for you," the man
said. "Would you come with me?"
The other passengers exchanged resentful glances, es-
pecially the woman. She had never been out of range of
civilised cosmetic treatment, and her age was impossible
to assess, whereas Maddalena had had to age the full
twenty years she'd spent where cosmetics were mere
primitive pastes and powders.
She obeyed the instruction apathetically. But the mo-
ment she came to the lock and saw who was waiting be-
low in the open cockpit of the ground-skimmer, she
forgot everything in a wave of pure joy.
"Gus."' she shouted, and flew down the gangway three
steps at a time to hurl her arms around his neck.
"Easy, girl, easy!" he said, disengaging her grip. "I
have to maintain some show of authority around this
dump, even though I hate it. Let's have a look at you.
It's been a long time."
Maddalena pulled back to arm's reach and studied her
old friend. "You look better on. it than I do," she said
with a twinge of envy. And indeed he did; his grey hair
had been treated, his face smoothed to wipe away
worry-lines, his waistline trimmed to a lean youthfulness.
In his immaculate commandant-rank uniform, he looked
like a come-on advertisement for Patrol recruitment.
"Have to maintain appearances, the same way you've
had to," he grunted. "Here, get in and I'll run you back
to my HQ for a bit of refreshment. Your gear will be
taken care of. It's not often I get the chance to use my
position for my own amusement, but this time I've done
it, and you're getting the finest treatment the planet can
afford."
"Amusement?" Maddalena said, relaxing with a sigh
into the soft padding of the passenger seat. "Did you
fetch me here simply for amusement?"
Langenschmidt, easing the ground-skimmer around the
tail of the newly-landed shipthe metal shell of the pon-
toon resonated under themshot a starded glance at her.
"Weren't you told why you were being sent here? I'd
have expected you to raise hell at having your leave
postponed when you've waited twenty years for it!"
"No, I just did as I was told." Maddalena narrowed
her eyes against the brilliant sunshine and let her gaze
rove over the ddily-parked spaceships.
"Hm! You must have changed in the years since we
last met," Langenschmidt said. "Yon used to be a con-
siderable spitfire. Well, IWell!" He ran his hand
around the collar of his full-dress jacket. "I'd better start
by explaining, hadn't I? It's to do with the ZRP's, of
course. The row about non-interference has blown up
yet once moreit's been in the wind since shortly before
I was recalled from my beat and put in charge here, and
I was put in charge here for precisely the reason that the
centre of the whole brewing row was right on Cyclops."
Maddalena, hardly paying attention, made some sort of
sound interpretable as an interested comment.
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Langenschmidt went on: "In fact, some of it was to
do with our little affair at Carrig. Although they were
never able to come out and complain openly, the pride
of the Cyclops government was badly hurt by the fact
that a hundred or so Cyclopeans had been dropped into
volcanoes by dirty smelly barbarians, and that we hadn't
acted to stop this because of the principle of non-inter-
ference with ZRP development. It takes years to stir up
trouble when there are two hundred and whatevertwo
hundred sixty, isn't it?worlds with a say in running the
Corps, but a determined party can get the wheels turn-
ing eventually. And on Cyclops we have just such a de-
termined party. Her name is Alura Quist, and if there
weren't officially a representative government here I'd
say she was a dictator. She's just ahunstoppable.
"The Cyclopeans don't like having our base here, but
they can't balance their planetary budget without the
revenue it brings in. So short of kicking the Corps off-
planet, there's only one way they can get back at us for
the Carrig business. That's to attack our prized principle
of non-interference. And with a view to this, Quist is
right now staging a big conference on the subject, with
delegates from all kinds of worlds including Earth, and
frankly I'm horrified at the influential names she's man-
aged to rope in.
"The problem is in my lap, Maddalena, and I've wor-
ried myself stupid about it. They put me here to try and
stave off what Quist is doing, and I'm losing out. When I
heard you were at the end of your tour, I thought, 'By
Cosmos! She's from Earth, and out this way Earthborn
Corpsmen are few and far betweenshe's served as an
on-planet agent, so she has first-hand testimony avail-
able.' For all these and several other reasons, I thought
maybe you'd jolt my mind out of its old grooves and
somehow inspire me to get the better of Quist."
Maddalena stirred and turned her finely-shaped head.
Her former look of fragility, Langenschmidt noted, had
faded, and she seemed toughened and far less feminine.
"After twenty years watching a gang of Zarathustra
refugees getting nowhere, Gus, I'm pretty well con-
vinced myself that it's a crime to leave them to make
fools of themselves. I'm sorry to disappoint you within
minutes of our first meeting in years, but that's the way I
feel right now, and if you want to convince the dele-
gates to this conference that non-interference is the right
course, you can start by trying it on me!"
m
For the third time Bracy Dyge began on the miscel-
laneous collection of transistors littering the bottom of
his spares box, hoping against hope that the fault in his
fish-finder would put itself right. He was four days from
port, even if he started home right away, in this sluggish
ancient trawler which represented his whole family's
means of supportwith himself as sole able-bodied
seaman. He had been three days on the fishing-grounds,
and only last night had he cottoned on to the fact that
the reason for his inability to locate any schools of oilfish
lay in an equipment fault, not in a total absence of fish.
For some reason far beyond his rudimentary technical
knowledge to fathom, the fish-finder refused to signal
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anything closer than the bottom of the sea. With mad-
dening precision it delineated on its circular screen the
profile of the rocks three hundred feet below his keel,
but it wouldn't even show the big plastic bucket he was
trailing as a sea-anchor.
Transistors were expensive, and it was impossible to
tell by merely looking at them whether they were in
functional condition or not. Accordingly, he couldn't
say whether those he had salvaged at various times and
popped in the spares box were better, or worse, than the
ones installed in the fish-finder already. He could merely
try every possible combination until he had exhausted
the last permutation, and since there were altogether six-
teen transistors in the fish-finder and seven in the spares
box, it was proving an impossibly long job.
At least, however, it was ridding him of some useless
junk. Two of the spares had put the fish-finder com-
pletely out of action, and these he had tossed overboard
with annoyance.
The son was baldng hot, and the sea was completely
featureless. His trawler, shabby and paint-peeling, was
the only sign of life as far as he could see. On the after-
deck, in the exiguous shadow of a torn plastic awning,
he sat with legs crossed, using the front plate off the
fish-finder housing as a tray for the loose parts. He was
very lean, and the summer had tanned his naturally-dark
skin to the colour of old rich leather. His hair hung
around his shoulders in thick braids, and a shiny but
sea-tarnished chrome ring was threaded through the
pierced lobe of his left ear. Anyone with a knowledge of
the culture of Cyclops would have placed him instantly,
even without stopping to consider his off-white loincloth
and elastic sandals: a fisherboy from one of the sea-hemi-
sphere ports, most likely Grarignol, and doing rather
badly this year.
Correct. Morosely, Bracy discovered that another
transistor was worthless, and that made three over the
side.
At least, he promised himself, he was not going to turn
for home before he had exhausted all possibilities for
self-help. Even then.. .
His stomach churned and his mind quailed at the pros-
pect of going home with an empty hold. Better, surely,
to cruise at random until his nets chanced on something
for the family to eat, even if he found no oilfish. Oilfish
were the only salable species in this part of the ocean;
eating fish could be got by anyone, simply by casting a
few lines with bait. Oilfish travelled in vast schools of
eight to ten thousand, but because the schools were so
big they were likewise concentrated, and without a fish-
finder one might hunt for weeks and not cross the path
of a single school.
. If only he belonged to a different family . . . ! If he
were one of the Agmess boys, for instance, six brothers
of whom two had sufficient technical skill not merely to
do their own electronics repairs but actually to build
equipment for other families' boats . .. But by the same
token, they guarded their knowledge well. He would
have to go home and pay for their assistance, or pay
someone elsewhat with, after a fruitless voyage?
Agmess boats had radio, too, and in the event of a break-
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file:///F|/rah/John%20Brunner/Brunner,%20John%20-%20Repairmen%20of%20Cyclops.txt
down they could signal for help, whereas he was on his
own, in charge of the boat which supported his four sis-
ters, his grandmother and his eight-year-old younger
brother.
He was himself seventeen years old. He had been the
breadwinner of the family since the great storm of the
winter before last during which his parents had been
drowned in the capsizing of a lifeboat put out to rescue
a damned fool.
Add me to the list, Bracy told himself sourly. My
parents would be dreadfully ashamed, to see me in this
stupid mess!
He paused in his thankless task and cast a casual glance
over the bumished shield of the sea, not expecting to see
anything but the water and the sky. His heart gave a
lurch and seemed to go out of rhythm for several beats,
and he almost spilled the spare parts from the makeshift
tray balanced on his legs.
Jackson's buzzards! This far north, they could mean
Only one thinga wolfshark!
With frantic haste he gathered the bits of the fish-
finder and thrust them in a bag where at least he could
find them again, and scrambled to his feet. There was
one other way of tracking oilfish besides using electronic
aids, and that was to follow a wolfshark as the buzzards
did, until its eagerness for prey led it to a school. It
could sense the same nutrient-rich currents as all the
other fish, and those currents always defined the oilfish's
path.
Of course, not all such currents held oilfishthere
were too many of them. But it was an idea.
He hesitated, eyes screwed np against the glare, raising
the sole of one foot to rub it on the calf of the opposite
leg as he always did when concentrating on a problem.
There were several factors to weigh before a decision
was reached. First off, this wolfshark must be a whopper
to have so many blizzards trailing him. Second, he was
already four days from home, and a wolfshark finding
plenty of prey might kill the clock around for a week
before tiring and turning towards the equator again.
Third, although he had heard about using a wolfshark as
a pilot on the traces of an oilfish school, he had never
known anyone really do itit was needlessly chancy
now that everyone sailing from Grarignol could afford a
fish-finder.
Finally, if a wolfshark that size decided to attack his
trawler, it could probably sink it with a single fierce
charge.
Bracy drew a very deep breath. Now was the time for
desperate measures, he concluded, and went to see
whether he was equipped for the job.
Stores were no problem, apart from water, and unless
the weather broke he could keep the solar still going.
- Power, likewiseduring the day he drew enough to
move the boat at a sluggish walking pace from silicon-
dynide sails spread to catch the sun, and at night he
could spare a little of his stored reserves. He could tisk a
couple of days on the wolfshark's trail.
Defending himself if the beast turned nasty was an-
other matter altogether. His only weapons were two
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file:///F|/rah/John%20Brunner/Brunner,%20John%20-%20Repairmen%20of%20Cyc\lops.txtRepairmenofCyclopsbyJohnBrunnerTheskyrangwiththereverberationoffiercewhitesunlightliketheinteriorofabluedrum.Windhotasthebreathofafurnaceteasedthesilveroceanintoripples,andtheripplesshatteredthesun'simageintoablazingpat...

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