After eating, Brinley showed them where they could wash the trays and utensils. The washing surprised Paul and Gretchen with how much water was used.
“There seems to be waste of water, and I cannot get used to that,” Paul stated.
“Paulie, it is not wasted. The water is purified and recycled and reused.” Her smile was a bit condescending as she explained it. She had spoken to him on numerous occasions about water use, but he still seemed resigned to complain about it.
The trader bunks were snug compartments, about two meters wide and three meters deep, with just a bed. There was a common toileting location also off the dining area. The whole set up was clearly designed for temporary use by people on trade missions.
“I am taking number seven and looking forward to sleep,” Brinley commented with a yawn. “Good meal, safe zone, and a bed.”
“I guess we can share number eight,” Gretchen replied and placed her hand lovingly on Paul’s shoulder.
Inside the trader bunk, with the door closed, and the lights turned low, Paul and Gretchen sat on the cozy bed and talked about what they were seeing. Tiffany answered some questions on the private channels, but had no conjectures to make about what was being seen.
“This is one of the few times we have been alone in a safe place on the Vanguard,” Gretchen commented as she stretched out of the bed. “Shall we make the best of our time?”
Paul leaned over and kissed her. He shut down the light as he slipped into the bed beside her.
The next morning, Brinley awoke them by tapping on the outside of the trader bunk’s door. “Time to get going. There is a breakfast here. Eat quickly; I do not want to miss any of Jodie’s Minstrel’s show.”
After the quick meal, where Paul tried something which was fluffy, yellow and all jumbled together, but tasted pretty good, as well as some fruit and bread, they departed. The main corridor which led away from the dining area was made from the typical permalloy. This one was off-white colored and had some reinforcing joists across the top at intervals of about five meters.
They came to a pressure door at the side of the main corridor, which was controlled by a color pad. The door had bright white letters stenciled on it: ‘Warning: Oblique Gravity Manipulation Adjustment Point’. Brinley stopped before it and hesitated for a bit. “Gravity changes inside here.” She then entered the proper sequence and the pressure door slid open.
Inside was a sphere about ten meters in diameter. The doorway they entered was one of many pressure doors located at various places around the sphere. The three of them stepped in and grabbed onto hand rails which were located near the pressure door. “You know how this works?” Brinley asked.
“No, but I imagine you are about to show us,” Paul said.
“This sphere is gimbaled to be able to rotate and align with the other corridors. I will enter the sequence, the sphere will gently shift position, and we will exit out the same door we entered. There will be some sensation of movement, but just hold on and you will be fine,” Brinley gave them a huge smile.
“It will not be zero gravity?” Gretchen asked.
“No. The only place zero gravity is found is in the airlocks, hanger bays and outside of the Vanguard. Oh, I have heard that there are some zero gravity work out centers, but those are in the drive ship, so I have never seen them. The CPO controls all of the drive ship,” Brinley replied as she punched in the sequence.
The sphere did rotate and move, but as Brinley had said, it was not difficult to keep steady by holding onto the handrail.
“Are you ready to see what lies beyond?”
“How can I know until I see it?” Paul mumbled. “Is it the habitat you call Oasis?”
“We will still be in a corridor, but you will be able to see Oasis. I just want you to be prepared. This will not be like the Wilds. This is A Habitat: Oasis.” Brinley looked at them both with a smile. “I think you will find it interesting, to say the least.”
“You said it will not be frozen, so that is good. Will there be animals?” Gretchen asked.
“It will not be frozen. You will see lots of life,” Brinley replied. She punched in the sequence of colors on the control pad. The pressure door slid open again.
Beyond the doorway it was lighter than in the spherical room they were leaving. Everything looked brighter, different, and more wondrous than Paul or Gretchen could have imagined. The corridor was made from clear permalloy in nearly its entirety; the only part which was colored was a walking path on the floor which was a deep shade of blue. Illumination came from a thin strip of lights running at the top of the passageway. There was a slight reflection off the clear permalloy which made it possible to tell where the walls were. That path, and the clear permalloy which surrounded it, stretched off to the distance in a winding manner. But outside of that clear permalloy there was a bluish vastness that was hard to comprehend. There seemed to be multiple colors ahead and around the corridor.
“What is this?” Paul said with awe in his voice. Looking up he could see it was lighter blue overhead, and looking down it was deeper blue turned to almost black. He stepped into the transparent permalloy corridor, and onto the dark blue path.
“What is that out there?” Gretchen asked. She peered against the clear permalloy wall as she too made the transition from the gravity adjustment sphere room onto the clear permalloy path.
Suddenly, a reddish-orange something darted past the tube. Gretchen was startled and looked back to see over the top of the pressure door. Outside there was a rocky wall stretching as far as they could see to the sides, above and below. The clear permalloy tunnel came out of that rocky wall. Scattered among the rocks were some kind of stringy things waving about. The stringy things were waving in a slow and ponderous manner. They were yellowish green and all about a quarter meter long. The reddish-orange thing swooped out of the grasses, and as it rolled itself out it was long and slender and tapered to a rounded point. It almost looked like some kind of rope or cable, but it was larger where it was hidden in the grasses. Looking closely, they could see other ropy things of similar types. The ropey things were all connected to a central mass. As the thing rolled out, it showed itself to be more stripped and mottled in colors on one side and vastly different on the other side. When the appendage lay against the clear permalloy, there were circular things on the bottom of the appendage. Those circular things were in neat rows, and seemed to move a bit and expand or contract as the thing slithered over the permalloy. Then another appendage joined it, and a third.
“Is that an animal of some kind?” Paul asked in amazement.
The thing pulled itself out of the grasses and sort of floated or moved over the permalloy above their heads. It had eight appendages, and they rolled along and propelled it effortlessly. There was a small bit of something which expanded where the appendages came together on the side where the white cups were located. That thin, membrane kind of thing moved with the arms. Perhaps it was their recent incident in the gravity adjustment sphere, but the way the thing moved reminded Gretchen of how they had moved in zero gravity.
“Look! All those arm things are attached at the center with that lumpy shape above them,” Paul declared. “I thought I saw some pointy thing at the center of all those limbs.”
The limbs swirled and that lumpy shape moved. An eye looked down at them.
Both Gretchen and Paul jumped back and away from the creature they were seeing.
Brinley laughed hard. “That is just an octi; they love to play by the lights of this passage. They can be all kinds of colors, from red to brown to spotted or striped. They are fun to watch, and very intelligent. Do you not know about any of the sea creatures?”
“Sea creatures?” Paul stammered as he stared at the octopus. “Tiffany! What is she talking about?”
Through the private channel Tiffany replied, “Paul, you are looking at a vast collection of water. If our records from before the Great Event are correct, that water will be filled with all sorts of a
quatic creatures. The failure of the data sticks prevents me from complete analysis of what you are seeing and comparison with all available records. However, I conjecture that living things is an Octopus Maiorem Chierchiae, or a closely related species.”
“That is all water out there?” Paul asked out loud.
“Of course it is,” Brinley replied. “Oasis is nearly all water.”
“Paul there are more of those animals!” Gretchen pointed to the rocky wall and indeed, there were others like the one that was on the clear permalloy.
“That is all water?” Paul asked again. “I thought all that snow was hard to believe. Now a whole atmosphere of water?”
“We shall talk about it while we walk. I want to see Jodie’s Minstrels,” Brinley walked away down the clear passageway. “It will take us a while to get there, so keep walking. I thought the extra time would be worth it for you to see this.”
As they walked along other things came up to the clear permalloy and then departed. Many were oblong shaped and brightly colored.
“Those are fish. The teacher John once showed our class an old recording of ocean life. Do you remember that, Paul?” Gretchen said as she peered at a creature as it swam by. It was striped in white and yellow. It was followed by a whole group of others which looked just like it. They darted away quickly after passing the walkway.
“John showed us lots of things which seemed impossible,” Paul muttered. “I guess I was wrong to doubt his stories. I still cannot believe how much water is out there.”
The clear permalloy passageway twisted to the side, and there was something surrounded it. It at first looked like more rocks, but this was different than the rocks. It whitish colored, and had vegetation scatted about on it. It was perforated with lots of small holes and crevasses. Floating about and around were more colorful fish of all kinds and sizes. Gretchen placed her hand against the permalloy and gazed at the phenomenal sight in front of her. “So this is what a stable biological habitat looks like. It is so beautiful.”
“Oh yes, the sea creatures are great,” Brinley stated. “But we will also be visiting the island where Jodie’s Minstrels are performing. There you will see many more things. You two remind me of when I was a child. Yet, you are old enough to be my parents.”
“Parents?” Gretchen asked. She pondered what Brinley meant by that remark, but did not ask for more clarification. She was so intrigued by the fish and other things she was seeing.
After about twenty minutes of walking, they passed though the coral reef and were again surrounded by the open water. Twice they had passed other pressure doors which were obviously welded shut and reinforced with dark colored permalloy struts. The tunnels that led away from those pressure doors did not have internal illumination, and they disappeared away into the vastness of the water. They walked mostly in silence with Paul and Gretchen in amazement at the biological world they were seeing, and Brinley in deep ponderings about the events in her life.
The passageway twisted and turned but they continued to walk onward. There were still occasional fish swimming by, one was a large thing, longer than Gretchen was tall, with a light gray back and white belly. It was very sleek and moved with amazing grace and poise. It had a triangular shaped projection upward from its back, and slotted openings behind its black eyes. Its mouth was filled with many pointy teeth.
“That fish is huge!” Gretchen said, as it swam by nearly effortlessly. “But the teeth!”
“Sharks feed on the other fish,” Brinley replied.
“Like that hairy beast we saw in the elevator car back in the frozen place. That too was feeding on another animal,” Paul recalled. “I guess that makes for the balance in the habitats? Predators and prey? So the large ones eat the small ones.”
Brinley looked at him. She was still surprised by his lack of understanding of the simplest things. “Yes, a cycle of life. There are other sea creatures which are far bigger than that shark. Some are about five times as big. But we are getting close to the end of this section of the passageway. We will go up to the island soon.”
Ahead, there was another pressure door. It was set right where the structure again encountered ground of some kind. Instead of a nearly vertical wall, like where they had entered, this time the underwater ground sloped upward at a gentle angle. Brinley entered a sequence on the color pad, and the door slid to the side. Beyond it looked much the same as before they had entered the clear permalloy section.
“We are under the island now. The freight elevator is at the center of the island, and we will take that to the surface,” Brinley explained. She then pointed down a large corridor. “Most people probably came to the island that way, it is a far shorter walk, but I thought you would enjoy seeing the sea creatures.”
“Yes, I did,” Gretchen said with enthusiasm. “That was marvelous. I have never seen anything like that. The old records just do not show how it really is.”
In addition to some cross passages which were open, there were several more welded-shut doors they passed as they walked to the elevator.
“Are there Roe in these halls?” Paul asked.
“Probably not, but Roe can be found nearly everywhere, even in some habitats, sometimes. It depends on where someone gets sick, and if some animals have brought the Outbreak in. Rats are common vectors for the infection. I have not seen any Roe actually in Oasis, but have heard that the places outside of the safe zone here are dangerous. But Paulie, you are immune. Enough talk, I want to see Jodie’s Minstrels.”
The foyer in front of the elevator was where four passages all met together. Brinley entered the proper sequence in the color pad, and the elevator doors slid apart. The opening was standard size, but the inside of the elevator was enormous. It was roughly ten meters wide, and twice that deep. At the back of the elevator there was a door nearly as wide as the elevator itself.
“Up we go!” Brinley said as she operated the controls.
The lift took them up and then stopped. It surprised both Gretchen and Paul when the top of the lift pealed back in equal wedge shaped sections. The entire top parted that way, with the wedges retreating back down into the shaft of the lift. The island was revealed.
The light shining down from the sky tube was dazzling. They all blinked their eyes against the glare, and then looked around. Far, far overhead was the sky tube, far too bright to look at directly. It stretched from one end of the sky to the other. Looking down they saw that the lift had emerged at the crest of a small hill. Sloping away from them was the island.
This place was nothing like the frozen habitat Paul and Gretchen had seen before. This place was very warm, and very bright. The air was heavy with humidity. Brinley walked off the deck of the lift and followed a gravel path which gradually descended down to a large flat area. In the distance were tents and crowds of people walking about.
Paul and Gretchen hesitated. The sight was too enchanting. The area around the lift was a blanket of deep green and brown grasses. The grasses were about calf high. There also were tall twisting cylindrical plants, with tan bodies, and large but thin, flat projections coming out the sides at the top. The projections were in groups of about eight or ten and flopped to the sides of the cylinder. These tubular vegetative growths were about five to ten meters high, from the ground to the top where the flat side projections were located. Some went nearly straight up, and others were at various angles. Each plant was different from the others and they were scattered about on all sides.
“Trees?” Gretchen asked. “Some bizarre kind of tree? Very different from that frozen place. Very different. This land mass is surrounded by water. And down there, water is running in some kind of a trench or avenue.” Gretchen pointed to the place where Brinley was heading.
“Yes, look beyond those things!” Paul exclaimed. “I agree. I too think that is water out there.” He pointed his right hand at the water which encircled the island. “And we must be perhaps two or three hundred meters up from that surface of the water.
So we were under that water in the clear permalloy passageway. Those fish things are down in that water, and we are now way above it.”
Suddenly, three dark objects hurled by. Both Gretchen and Paul ducked.
“Those are just the gulls. Unless they expel dropping on you they cannot hurt you! Come on,” Brinley called. “The minstrels are already set up down the hill a bit.”
Paul and Gretchen watched the birds soar away and circle around. The birds were so graceful and only rarely stroked a wing to keep moving.
“They seem to float on the air,” Paul commented. “How do they stay aloft?”
“They are like those fish we saw. These gulls swim through the air like the fish swim through the water. It is beautiful. And here it is warm. We saw some animals in that frozen place, but I could not take the time to really appreciate how amazing they really are,” Gretchen said.
“I am going to the minstrel show, with our without you. I prefer to be with you! Come on!” Brinley called.
The Colony Ship Vanguard: The entire eight book series in one bundle Page 35