the copter came, it dropped food and water, and it went away. it came, dropped food and water, and went away. once a water-bag burst when dropped. they lost nearly half a week's water supply. before the copter came again they'd gone two days without drinking.
there were other incidents, of course. the dried seaweed they slept on turned to powdery trash. they got more seaweed hauling long kelp-like strands of it ashore from where it clung to the island's submerged rocks. ganti mentioned that they must do it right after the copter came, so there would be no sign of enterprise to be seen from aloft. the seaweed had long, flexible stems of which no use whatever could be made. when it dried, it became stiff and brittle but without strength.
once ganti abruptly began to talk of his youth. as if he were examining something he'd never noticed before, he told of the incredible conditioning-education of the young members of his race. they learned that they must never make a mistake. never! it did not matter if they were unskilled or inefficient. it did not matter if they accomplished nothing. there was no penalty for anything but making mistakes or differing from officials who could not make mistakes.
so thrid younglings were trained not to think; not to have any opinion about anything; only to repeat what nobody questioned; only to do what they were told by authority. it occurred to jorgenson that on a planet with such a population, a skeptic could make a great deal of confusion.
then, another time, jorgenson decided to make use of the weathering cord which had been cut from the copter when he was landed. he cut off a part of it with a sharp-edged fragment of stone from the pile some former prisoner on the island had made. he unravelled the twisted fibers. then he ground fishhooks from shells attached to the island's rocky walls just below water-line. after that they fished. sometimes they even caught something to eat. but they never fished when the copter was due.
jorgenson found that a fish-fillet, strongly squeezed and wrung like a wet cloth, would yield a drinkable liquid which was not salt and would substitute for water. and this was a reason to make a string bag in which caught fish could be let back into the sea so they were there when wanted but could not escape.
they had used it for weeks when he saw ganti, carrying it to place it where they left it overboard, swinging it idly back and forth as he walked.
if jorgenson had been only a businessman, it would have had no particular meaning. but he was also a person, filled with hatred of the thrid who had condemned him for life to this small island. he saw the swinging of the fish. it gave him an idea.
he did not speak at all during all the rest of that day. he was thinking. the matter needed much thought. ganti left him alone.
but by sunset he'd worked it out. while they watched thrid's red sun sink below the horizon, jorgenson said thoughtfully:
"there is a way to escape, ganti."
"on what? in what?" demanded ganti.
"in the helicopter that feeds us," said jorgenson.
"it never lands," said ganti practically.
"we can make it land," said jorgenson. thrid weren't allowed to make mistakes; he could make it a mistake not to land.
"the crew is armed," said ganti. "there are three of them."
"they've only knives and scimitars," said jorgenson. "they don't count. we can make better weapons than they have."
ganti looked skeptical. jorgenson explained. he had to demonstrate crudely. the whole idea was novel to ganti, but the thrid were smart. presently he grasped it. he said:
"i see the theory. if we can make it work, all right. but how do we make the copter land?"
jorgenson realized that they talked oddly. they spoke with leisurely lack of haste, with the lack of hope normal to prisoners to whom escape is impossible, even when they talk about escape. they could have been discussing a matter that would not affect either of them. but jorgenson quivered inside. he hoped.
"we'll try it," said ganti detachedly, when he'd explained again. "if it fails, they'll only stop giving us food and water."
that, of course, did not seem either to him or jorgenson a reason to hesitate to try what jorgenson had planned.
it was not at all a direct and forthright scheme. it began with the untwisting of more of the rope that had lowered jorgenson. it went on with the making of string from that fiber. they made a great deal of string. then, very clumsily and awkwardly, they wove strips of cloth, a couple of inches wide and five or six long. they made light strong cords extend from the ends of the cloth strips. then they practiced with these bits of cloth and the broken stones a former prisoner had piled so neatly.
the copter came and dropped food and water. when it left, they practiced. when it came again they were not practicing, but when it went away they practiced. they were a naked man and a naked thrid, left upon a morsel of rock in a boundless sea, rehearsing themselves in an art so long-forgotten that they had to reinvent the finer parts of the technique. they experimented. they tried this. they tried that. when the copter appeared, they showed themselves. they rushed upon the dropped bag containing food and water as if fiercely trying to deny each other a full share. once they seemed to fight over the dropped bag. the copter hovered to watch. the fight seemed furious and deadly, but inconclusive.
when the copter went away jorgenson and ganti went briskly back to their practicing.
they were almost satisfied with their proficiency, now. they had lost some of the small stones, but there were many left. they began to work with seaweed, the kind with long central stems which dried to brittle stiffness. they determined exactly how long they should be allowed to dry. they studied the way in which the flat seaweed foliage must be dried on rounded stone spaces to form seemingly solid surfaces of almost any shape. but they were utterly brittle when they were dry. it was not possible to make them hold any form for more than a day or so, even if sprinkled with cold water to keep them from crumbling to dust.
and they practiced with the strip of cloth and the stones. ganti became more skilful than jorgenson, but even jorgenson became an expert.
there came a day when the copter dropped the bag of food and ganti danced with seeming rage and shook his fist at it. the crew-thrid saw him, but paid no attention. they went away. and ganti and jorgenson went to work.
they hauled seaweed ashore. it had to dry to some degree before it could hold a form at all. while it dried, they practiced. the leaves were ready before the stems. they spread them on rounded surfaces, many leaves thick. they dried to dark-gray-greenish stuff looking like the crudest possible cardboard without a fraction of cardboard's strength or stiffness. presently the stems were dry enough to be stiff but not yet entirely brittle. they made a framework, uniting its members with string from the dropped rope.
two days before the copter was due again, they used the cardboard-like but fragile curved sheet of seaweed-leaves to cover the frame. finished, they had what looked like the fuselage of a landed copter.
thicker but brittle sections of the stems seemed rotor-blades when more seaweed-cardboard was attached. from two hundred feet, the crudities of the object would not show. it would look like a helicopter landed on the island where jorgenson and ganti were confined.
it would look like a rescue.
when the copter arrived, it checked in midair as if it braked. it hung in the air. its crew stared down. they saw a strange aircraft there. the helicopter whirled and went streaking away toward the horizon.
jorgenson and ganti immediately attacked their own creation. the framework was brittle; barely able to sustain its own weight. they furiously demolished the whole thing. they hauled its fragments into the cave. they worked furiously to remove every trace of its former presence.
within two hours a fleet of six steam-copters came driving across the sea. they swept over the island. they looked. they saw jorgenson and ganti—naked man and naked thrid—glaring up at them. they saw nothing else. there was nothing else to see.
there was a thrid official on one of the copters. the matter had been reported to him. a helicopter could only have landed on this island to rescue the prisoners. they were not rescued. there had been no helicopter. the crew of the craft which made the report had made a mistake!
jorgenson and ganti gloated together when darkness had fallen. the copter-crew had made a false report. they would face an angry official. either they'd take back their original report, or stick to it. if they took it back, they'd tried to deceive an official, who could not be wrong. jorgenson and ganti gloated over what they'd done to their jailers.
