Bony wondered how Friday Indigo was doing, up there on the surface. Also what he was doing. The captain had been very secretive. The Mood Indigo could always descend again and sit the storm out safely on the bed of the sea—provided that Indigo had the sense to listen to the warning message, and act on it. On the other hand, this was a situation where the Mood Indigo would have been invaluable. The ship could fly three kilometers far quicker than anyone could walk.
Eager Seeker was already in motion, Tinker components rapidly removing themselves from the main body. The process appeared totally random. Bony began to put his suit back on, but he could not hide his curiosity.
While he was waiting for his suit to climb back up his body, he asked, "How does a Tinker Composite decide what size to be?"
The Pipe-Rilla said at once, "It is all a question of necessary function. If there are—"
"Vow-of-Silence, do you mind? After all, this is our own self that is being discussed." There was a definite testiness to Eager Seeker's tone. Bony, recalling that the Tinker Composite had not said one word after their initial greeting, decided that Vow-of-Silence might represent not so much a name as a desire on the part of others.
The blunt head-like upper part of the Composite turned toward Bony, even as components sped away from it. Eager Seeker was taking on a distinctly ragged appearance as the Tinker Composite went on, "A full answer would require much time. But there are certain simple rules. First, if we wish to we can join every component together. When we do so, we have increased thinking power. But we are also less nimble mentally. We are slower, with a longer integration time. Thus, we are not so quick to complete a thought or to reach a decision. The integration time grows very quickly—exponentially—with the number of components. When the problem is large, we combine all units. This, of course, is why we came here as a Composite of unusual size, with the expectation of problems of unusual difficulty. Normally, we choose a compromise between speed of thought and depth of thought. In a possible emergency—as now—smaller is better. And since we must soon leave the ship"—more and more dark-winged bodies flew away from the main bulk of the Composite—"we will take that action not as an entity, but as a non-entity. As individual components . . ."
The voice faded to nothing, the speaking funnel closed, and a blizzard of purple-black swirled about the cabin before vanishing up a narrow tube in the ceiling.
"Eager Seeker leaves through an airlock too small for me or you." Vow-of-Silence was wriggling her body and legs into the odd array of tubes, which mysteriously transformed into a suit. "We will use the exit method you so kindly provided. Come now. The Angel's ship waits for us, but the storm declines to do so."
She led the way back out through the airlock. Bony and Liddy followed. Under the sea there was no sign of the coming storm, although all the bubble people had vanished. Eager Seeker, in the form of its thousands of separate parts, was already outside. The components seemed as much at home in water as in air, turning and tumbling around each other with easy flaps of tiny wings. And then, in a moment, all of them darted off at great speed in the same direction.
Vow-of-Silence set off after them, saying, "Of course, our presence may be quite unnecessary. Eager Seeker can probably ensure the Angel's safety without us." Her voice came, perfectly clear, into Bony's suit. So much for the opacity of water to radio waves. He wondered what other technical tricks the aliens had up their sleeves, also what strange physiology the Pipe-Rilla possessed. Vow-of-Silence appeared thin and fragile, and she was strolling along at what appeared to be a moderate pace, but no human could travel so fast in water. Bony and Liddy had to rise off the sea floor and use their thrustor jets to keep up.
They had gone only a short distance when the Tinker components came winging back. A group of them formed a tight cluster about Vow-of-Silence's suited figure, so that the Pipe-Rilla was obliged to stop moving and stand half-hidden on the seabed. After a few seconds the Tinker bodies lifted and again flew rapidly away.
Vow-of-Silence turned to Bony and Liddy. "Strange. Very strange. Eager Seeker went to the Angel ship, which is in exactly the position reported by the Sea-wanderers. It appears unharmed. However, the ship is open to the sea and the Angel is not on board."
Liddy said, "Does that mean the Angel is dead?"
"Not necessarily. The actions of Angels are often impenetrable, but self-preservation is high on their list of priorities. If you will excuse me . . ." Vow-of-Silence ducked her head and the Pipe-Rilla took off with gigantic strides, stepping easily across waving sea-grass two meters tall. Her rate of progress was enormous. Even with thrustors set to maximum, Bony and Liddy fell steadily behind. The undersea light was fading, though nightfall on Limbo was many hours away. Bony took a quick swoop up toward the surface, close enough to feel turbulence in the water. A few meters above his head, the full storm was arriving. He looked up and saw dark and light patterns rippling across the surface, synchronized to the movement of pressure waves across his body.
He dove back down, peering into underwater gloom and suddenly afraid that he might lose contact with both Liddy and Vow-of-Silence. The Pipe-Rilla had vanished but he saw Liddy plowing steadily on, just far enough above the seabed to avoid the clinging sea-grasses. He flew after her, across a sea valley, over a ridge, descending steadily and trying to will the suit thrustors to produce more than their maximum possible power. Was it imagination, or was Liddy slowing down?
Yes. Not just slowing. She had stopped. And then he could see Vow-of-Silence. And the clustered components of Eager Seeker. And then, in the middle of the group, a stout and unfamiliar form shaped like a giant artichoke.
When he came up to them, the Angel was speaking. Bony detected an unmistakable petulance in the computer-generated tones. "Naturally we left our ship. It was impossible to predict whether we would be swept into the ocean abyss, or carried onto the rocky shore. Neither outcome was acceptable. The Bard of Terra spoke truth: Cowards die many times before their death. However, the superior coward prefers not to die at all."
Vow-of-Silence said, "But are you all right, Angel? You seem helpless. Can you breathe under water?"
"You do not need to call us Angel. In Stellar Group company we answer to the name of Gressel. And we are certainly not helpless. In fact, we were heading for your ship when you found us. And although we cannot breathe under water, we can not breathe under water, which is what we are doing now."
As the Angel spoke it was creeping along the sea floor. The roots of the Chassel-Rose that formed the Angel's lower part retracted, pulled free of the bottom silt at a glacial rate, and quiveringly stretched forward to root themselves again. Bony's guess was that the three-kilometer journey to the Finder could well be all over in a matter of weeks.
Vow-of-Silence must have reached the same conclusion. The giant pipe-stem figure bent over the Angel, said, "With your permission, Gressel," and hoisted the bulky mass effortlessly up. "It is likely," the Pipe-Rilla went on, "that no effects of the storm will be observed at this depth, but we cannot be sure of that. We would rather be in our ship than outside it." Vow-of-Silence turned with the Angel in her arms and headed rapidly back the way that she had come.
"Perhaps you are right." After one moment of resistance, Gressel allowed itself to be carried. The Angel gloomily added, "A long farewell to all our greatness. We perforce accept assistance, and admit the maxim: better safe than sorry."
So far as Bony was concerned, safe was a debatable term. The deep sea remained calm enough, but something was happening above the surface. Dense clouds must have covered the blue sun, because the deeper waters had become so dark that Bony could no longer see the ocean floor. He grabbed Liddy by the hand and the two of them followed the faint suit lights of the Pipe-Rilla through abyssal gloom.
And then those suit lights, though not shrinking in size, began to fade in brightness. After a few baffled seconds Bony realized what was happening. The waves on the surface could not damage him at this depth, but they could stir
bottom sediments. Their whole party was moving through a thickening cloud of gray silt.
In that moment of understanding, the scene ahead of Bony lit in brilliant blue-white. Everything—lank sea-grasses, Pipe-Rilla, Angel, darting Tinkers, and pale mud cloud—became etched in light. There was a moment of startling clarity, which was as suddenly gone.
A lightning bolt—a major one—had hit the surface of the sea. The thunder came at once, shatteringly loud. The strike must have been directly above them.
But now Bony, blinded by the flash, could see nothing at all. Holding on to Liddy he allowed himself to coast to a halt. He had lost all sense of direction. The only hope was to follow Vow-of-Silence and the other aliens back to the Finder. But he could not see them, unless another bolt of lightning came to his assistance.
How many people stood and waited, hoping for a close lightning strike? Bony felt Liddy's arms around him. Even through the suits he could feel her trembling.
Come on, lightning bolt. Do your thing. Hit!
The response after five more seconds was a weak, far-off flicker, the puny glow of a lightning bolt several miles away. By its brief light Bony saw Vow-of-Silence, standing motionless with the Angel cradled in her forearms. Every Tinker component had vanished, he hoped to safety.
Once more it was too dark to see anything. Bony and Liddy stayed where they were, hoping that Vow-of-Silence was doing the same. Bony had a new worry. Suppose that the storm continued into the night and true darkness came to Limbo? He and Liddy would run out of air in eight more hours. He didn't know how it would be for the Pipe-Rilla, but long before morning the humans had to be back on board a ship.
Another lightning bolt came, hardly brighter than the last one. But this time a curious afterglow replaced the return of stygian darkness. It continued and brightened, and by its light Bony could once more make out the figures of the Pipe-Rilla and the Angel. He was about to head toward them when he heard Liddy gasp, "Bony! Look there. Up to the right."
His attention had been on the way ahead. Now he tilted his head back and followed Liddy's pointing arm. At once he saw the source of the new light.
It came not from the syncopated stutter of lightning bolts, nor from the faded gleam of Limbo's sun. The source of illumination was a ship. All lights blazing, it surged over them, about a hundred meters to their right. It was below the surface of the sea, and it must be gigantic because the forward surge of its great blunt hull produced a bow wave powerful enough to throw Bony helplessly backward and turn him upside down.
But it was not the pressure wave that made Bony gasp, nor was it fear of a war vessel alien and dangerous. He blinked in disbelief because he thought he knew that outline. That was no dinky space yacht, like the Mood Indigo, nor an alien flying machine like the one that he and Liddy had spotted on their trip ashore. Unless his eyes were deceiving him, that was a Class Five cruiser—a human design, symbol of former human military might, powerful and close to impregnable—driving its three-hundred-meter, eighty-plus-thousand-ton, thousand-crew bulk through the alien seas of Limbo.
And then, almost before Bony could bring himself back to an upright position, the monstrous ship was cruising on and vanishing into the fog of silt. The vessel was on a descending path. If it continued unchecked, ten more minutes would bring it to a halt on the seabed. A cruiser would surely survive that impact, and the little group on the seabed would be safer there than anywhere on Limbo.
Unless . . .
Bony could imagine a worse possibility. Suppose that the new ship's course was to the south or west? The coastal shelf ended a few kilometers in that direction. The cruiser might then be destined for a different fate: a descent into an unknown and unplumbed ocean. At sufficient depth and pressure, even the cruiser's solid hull would collapse like an imploding soap bubble.
18: FRIDAY GOES IT ALONE
Friday Indigo had said not a word to anyone, but he knew exactly what he must do. It had been obvious as soon as he learned that other Stellar Group members were present on Limbo.
The Tinkers and Pipe-Rillas, damn their alien guts, had met the Limbics before he had. They had ruined his chances for first contact with a new intelligent species.
But you didn't have to be a genius to draw a few other conclusions. First, no matter what that moron Rombelle might think, the Limbics were in a primitive, pre-technology stage of development. Second, the bubble-brain Limbics were marine creatures, who did not and could not occupy the land area of their planet. Third, on Rombelle and Liddy Morse's visit to the surface they had seen a working flying machine. Fourth, the Stellar Group members were stuck at the bottom of the sea. They had not explored the land.
Put it all together, and the answer stared you in the face: another intelligent species existed on Limbo. Its members lived not in the sea, but on dry land. They possessed technology, advanced enough to build an aircraft, and the plane's home base must be reasonably close since Rombelle had also reported seeing the shadow pass above him on his first excursion from the Mood Indigo. Finally, and most important, no one from the Stellar Group had been in touch with the land-dwellers. First contact with them would be a truly historic event—not a useless contact with some shapeless underwater objects who spoke in gobbledygook and were made of glop.
Hey, the presence of another Stellar Group ship on Limbo might even be a blessing. It meant that Friday could go off and look for the land-dwellers alone, without having to drag along the dead weight of Bony Rombelle and Liddy Morse. For the past few days he had regretted bringing them with him at all. Sure, the sex with Liddy was nice, but hardly worth the hassle of dealing with incompetents.
The Mood Indigo lifted easily from the seabed as Friday applied power to the auxiliary thrustors. Flying the ship underwater proved to be no harder than doing so in space—easier, in a way, because water resistance damped any slight over- or under-thrust. Friday raised the ship ten meters, then spent a few minutes trimming the balance and experimenting with lateral and vertical motion. As soon as he had the hang of it he would approach the shore. He was delighted to find that he could move the ship in any direction, at the same time rising or falling in the water exactly as he chose.
At first he headed due north, so that anyone watching would assume he was taking the ship back to its original position on the seabed. Only when he was kilometers away from the stranded Pipe-Rilla ship and could not see it using any of his instruments did he curve his course east, in the direction of the land.
He maintained a leisurely pace, not because he was worried or cautious but because he was savoring the moment. Let's face it, you could win a hundred space-sailing regattas from the Vulcan Nexus to the Dry Tortugas, and what did it get you? A shelf of rinky-dink trophies and your name in tiny print in some never-looked-at record book. You could start out in life with all the money you were ever likely to need, triple or quadruple it, and still find twenty Indigo family members with more. So if you were Friday Indigo, the name of the game had to be fame, not wealth. A first contact like this would put your name up there with Timbers Rattigan, who came back with news of the Tinker civilization, or Marianna Slung, who discovered the Angels of Sellora. You would be somebody little kids were told about in reverent tones: Friday Indigo, first human to encounter the—the—the what?
He needed a good name. The bubble-brains could be the "Limbics." That was a lousy name and anyway Bony Rombelle had chosen it. What to call the land-dwellers?
That was a no-brainer. Friday smiled. He was on his way for first contact with the Indigoans.
* * *
The Mood Indigo drifted steadily east, twenty meters below the surface. The ship's sonar told Friday that the sea depth beneath him was slowly decreasing, just as he had expected. It was his intention to move the ship as close to the shore as possible. With luck that would lift the upper decks clear of the surface, allowing him to use the top airlock and wade ashore without needing a suit.
The first suggestion that things might not continue according
to plan came from the sea-bottom sensors. Friday had set the auxiliary drive to a constant level of thrust, which ought to guarantee a steady rise or fall through the water. But the instruments in the control cabin insisted that the depth of water beneath the ship was changing in a cyclic way, increasing steadily by up to ten meters and then, half a minute later, decreasing by the same amount. Also—Friday ended his pleasant musing and became fully alert—the inertial positioning system insisted that although he had set the thrustors to take him due east, the direction of the Mood Indigo was in fact more like northeast.
Damn the instruments. Were they feeding him garbage? Had Rombelle somehow screwed them up, in his endless tinkering?
There was one easy way to find out, without depending on instruments: rise all the way to the surface, and take a look using the imaging sensors.
Friday fed more power to the thrustors. The result was immediate and disturbing. As the ship lifted higher it began to roll and pitch, rocking Friday from side to side at the controls. He swore, locked in the autopilot—God knows how well an autopilot developed for use in space would perform at sea—and called for a wraparound display from the bow imaging sensor.
Confusion. The seabed depth sonar was all over the place, and in any case there was no way to tell from its readings if the upper end of the Mood Indigo was above or below the surface. But the display ought to show one or the other, a view of air or a view of water. It provided neither. Friday saw a crazy patchwork pattern of bubbles and foam and dark streaks, plus an occasional glimpse of clouded sky. At the same moment he heard a sound. Something above his head was thumping on the highest part of the hull, loudly, imperatively, sending violent shivers through the whole ship.
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