Suddenly the water at the base of Lejour’s berg erupted into black and crimson spray; seconds later the thud of a detonation reached them.
‘Trying to stir his worm up?’ Rosskidd chuckled. ‘I suppose that’s one way.’
Erkelens and Skunder didn’t reply. They watched as the fountain of water subsided. Through the thick black smoke which drifted towards them they could see a wide crimson glow spreading, then the dense fumes hit it from view.
‘He’s fired the sea!’ Erkelens shouted. ‘The bastard’s fired the sea! The wind will carry it towards us!’
‘So?’ Rosskidd was coughing, his eyes streaming. ‘We can sit it out in the dome.’
‘You don’t understand,’ said Skunder quietly. ‘It could kill our worm.’
‘How? He’s safe enough down there.’
‘I don’t think so ...’ Skunder was rubbing a cloth in the snow; he tied it around his lower face in an effort to filter out the fumes. ‘A worm can panic’ His voice was muffled. ‘It’s not entirely blind; there are light-sensitive cells above and behind the mouth. It’s already nervous because of the oil...’
The smoke was clearing as the blaze approached; the wind whipped the black fumes lower, beneath their feet and round the flanks of the berg like a thick swirling tide. Beyond, the flames had spread into a broad ribbon some three hundred yards wide. The berg trembled.
‘The worm is frightened,’ said Skunder.
Rosskidd glanced around nervously. ‘What can we do?’ he asked.
‘Nothing. Just wait.’
Crimson, yellow, boiling into jet black, the broad lake of fire swept towards them as they stood mesmerised on the lip of the berg. Beyond, Lejour’s berg stood steady in calm water; they could see the minute figures of the crew, watching.
‘Look!’ A harsh cry from Rosskidd.
Fifty yards ahead a paleness appeared in the streaming black. A harsh sound reached them, a giant gasp, a tortured, racking inhalation. Heaving above the smoke, dripping cataracts of oily water from its segmented hide, the head of the bergworm appeared. Erkelens heard a low moan; Rosskidd was gazing at the monstrous apparition in horror, his hand clasped to his mouth. The head rose from the sea, higher, laboriously, swinging ponderously from side to side as the worm groaned in gigantic agony and the flames swept closer.
‘She cannot get her head back underwater,’ Skunder cried. ‘The fire is too close.’
Erkelens didn’t hear. He watched as the flames approached; his lips moved as he silently implored the leviathan to save itself, to return to its natural element. But the fire was too close now, directly below the head of the monster as it reared farther from the water and the berg shuddered as great sinews strained in the corridors below. The neck and head were vertical now, the cavernous mouth gaped at the sky in mortal supplication. Fifty feet from the sea the monster rose like a lighthouse beside the berg, and the three men stepped back, appalled.
‘She’s going!’ cried Skunder.
The berg itself was groaning as the tension increased, a trembling vibration transmitted into creaking cacophony. The flames were lapping around the column of the worm’s neck, the head was shuddering with strain, tilting, falling in seeming slow motion, collapsing back into the blazing sea in a rising cascade of fire with a booming concussion, a giant thunderclap.
Rosskidd and Erkelens were flung to the ground as the berg heaved and lurched; only Skunder remained standing to witness the end. The huge tube writhed in the sea of flames; the head rose once more, slowly, barely clearing the surface, and emitted a vast, coughing exhalation, spewing from the cavern of its body a gout of blazing oil, then relaxed into motionlessness and sank slowly beneath the surface. The flames moved on, past the flank of the berg. The berg was still, dead.
Skunder walked away, leaving the two men lying in the snow.
* * * *
Erkelens was the first to move; he rolled over, looked at the sky, sat up. He nudged Rosskidd who still lay there, his head pillowed on his arms.
‘OK, Rosskidd. You can get up now. It’s all over.’
Rosskidd groaned and turned over, he looked at the captain with the dregs of fear in his eyes. ‘God,’ he muttered.
‘Take it easy. We’re all right.’ Erkelens stood, brushing loose snow from his furs.
‘I thought... I thought the berg was going to capsize. I’ve heard it doesn’t take much to capsize a berg when it’s been moving through warm waters. I thought we’d had it, Erkelens.’
‘So did I, as a matter of fact.’ Erkelens glanced at Lejour’s berg, unscathed, moving slowly northwards; then he turned and surveyed the blazing sea rolling into the distance. ‘Where’s Skunder ?’ he asked suddenly.
‘I don’t know ... He was here a minute ago. Have we lost the worm?’
‘Yes...’ Erkelens shielded his eyes with his hand and gazed around the berg. ‘There he is!’ he exclaimed. ‘Christ, he’s swinging the submarine out! He’s going over the side!’
Rosskidd laughed bitterly. ‘The little bastard’s running out on us. We’re stranded, we’ve got no worm, so he’s teaming up with Lejour.’
‘I don’t think so, somehow,’ said Erkelens.
* * * *
Skunder depressed the lever and heard the click as the hooks disengaged. He thumbed the starter and coaxed the ancient pile into reluctant activity. Soon the turbine began to hum and the tiny submarine slid beneath the dark water. -He switched on the floodlights, veered away from the viridescent ice wall to his left, and headed north.
He remembered Valinda and felt the knot of hate in his stomach as his thoughts slid to Lejour while a tiny corner of his mind registered the opaque green on the viewscreen as the water swallowed his lights at the limit of visibility. There were fish at these latitudes, hardy black sharks cruising on the fringes of the killing polar cold in which only the worms could live. They watched him curiously as he passed and their cold eyes glinted green and baleful in the glow of the floodlights. He remembered Valinda and the day she had saved his life with a well-aimed dart from the turret of Lejour’s submarine. He had been inspecting a reluctant worm at close quarters and had not seen the shark as it circled above him, waiting its chance. But Valinda had seen it and he had felt a sudden, slight concussion; looking up, he saw the brute writhing and snapping at the dart projecting from its belly; blood trailed crimson in the water and he had thrashed his frantic way back to the submarine where Valinda held him close for a long time.
He thought of Lejour’s face when he had seen him two days ago. The sudden shock of recognition and then a fear behind the Earthman’s eyes. Lejour had remembered the day of their last meeting, when they had settled up Skunder’s share of the contract price and the figure received by the Cantek had been exactly double what he had expected at the outset of the voyage. Lejour had made no demur about paying him Valinda’s share; Skunder would have thought it was conscience money except for his conviction that Lejour was not the man to have a conscience.
‘All yours, Cantek,’ he had said generously. ‘I’ll be in touch when I get the next contract lined up.’
Skunder had regarded him silently for a while, the money in his hand.. It would have been a pointless gesture to refuse it, so he merely said: ‘Don’t bother, Earthman. The next time you see me will be the last.’ It had sounded melodramatic at the time but he had seen Lejour’s eyes widen slightly, allowing the fear to peep out.
Skunder recalled himself to the present, adjusted the trim of the craft and skimmed just below the surface, raising the periscope. A rainbow blur of oil slid down the screen, cleared, and he could see Lejour’s berg, riding high before him. He altered course to leave it to starboard and retracted the periscope. After a few minutes he dived, circling back, moving in close to the jagged wall of ice. Soon, he saw the phosphorescent flank of the worm.
A tired worm, driven hard for many days, uneasy due to the unaccustomed blackness of the oil-blanketed water. Inside the berg, its flanks would be painful from the c
onstant application of the scorching laser control.
It would be possible to persuade such a worm to leave the berg. A few well-placed mines about the rudimentary eyes ... He eased forward, following the vast segments of the body, moving towards the mouth. The glowing shape ended abruptly; a scattering of pilot fish darted about the region of the mouth, the little blue fish which followed the leviathans in order to feed from the spawn, in due course themselves becoming food for the growing worms. Skunder traversed the area, sizing up the most advantageous position for the mines behind that yawning mouth which filled the viewscreen. Suddenly he checked, throttled back and increased the magnification on the screen, his attention caught by a dark blob within the glowing mouth itself. The shape jumped into close-up, sleek; somehow patient and watchful.
Lejour’s submarine. Lurking within the very mouth, guarding the huge creature against just such an attack as Skunder envisaged. He wondered if Lejour himself was at the controls, but deemed it unlikely. In the time that he had worked for the Earthman, Skunder had never known Lejour to go below the surface; like most Earthmen, he was scared of the worm. He would have sent Alvo down.
Nevertheless, he had out-thought Skunder and the Cantek knew a moment of sick frustration. In order to plant the mines he would have to leave the submarine; he would be picked off easily by Alvo’s darts. For a while he patrolled to and fro outside the circumference of the mouth while the enemy craft twisted in sympathy, keeping him in the centre of its viewscreen.
A tell-tale light flashed on the control panel and Skunder dampened the miniature pile hastily; the reactor was beginning to overheat. He cursed Erkelen’s ramshackle equipment; this was the worst moment for a breakdown to occur. Lejour’s modern submarine, naturally, had automatic dampers. He cruised slowly away, around the rim of the mouth, followed by his watchful adversary. A dart clanged off his hull; a warning shot to remind him what the enemy could do if he tried to leave his craft to affix the mines.
He moved around the perimeter of the mouth, shadowed by the vigilant shape behind. He thought of Lejour on the surface of the berg, smiling grimly as the news of his futile attempt to cripple the worm was radioed back. He knew hate, frustrated and sickening.
And ahead, a ragged, star-shaped gash in the worm’s lip, legacy of a bygone mine injury ...
He veered away, his thoughts whirling, jetted a short distance into the open sea and turned, headed back, gained his bearings and stared at the scar as he approached.
Bergworms are long-lived, some make many voyages to and from the polar ice-caps ...
Again he saw Valinda swimming towards him, he saw the bright flash and the jagged wound, just there, just there...
And Lejour smiling into the radio receiver.
He dragged at the damper control. The warning light flickered.
He drove forward.
* * * *
Erkelens stood on the lip of the drifting berg, staring at the viscous sea; soon Rosskidd joined him.
‘I’ve sent a distress signal,’ said the mate. ‘It seems there’s a ship only a few miles away. They’ll pick us up before long. They complained a bit about having to detour through the oil, but I made it clear we were Earthmen.’
Erkelens glanced at him, then smiled bitterly.
‘What about the berg?’ resumed Rosskidd. ‘Do we just leave it here?’
‘The luck of the game. This one’s no use to anyone, now the worm’s dead. It’s not the sort of thing you can take in tow.’
‘That’s true...’ Rosskidd was watching Lejour’s berg as it moved steadily away. ‘What’s that?’ he asked, wondering.
Half a mile away, the glittering mass became suddenly indistinct, hazed with a corona of fine particles of snow and ice, refracting multi-coloured in the low sun. The sea around the base of the berg erupted slowly into incandescent spray.
‘Christ!’ whispered Rosskidd in awe. ‘He’s breaking up!’
As though struck from above with a giant cleaver the berg split down the centre, the halves rolling ponderously apart, and a vaulting spout of solid water leapt skywards from the widening gulf.
The rumble of a gigantic underwater explosion reached them, their berg trembled, they sat down abruptly in the snow and watched as the distant waterspout subsided and the sea quietened, became once more dark and sombre, the twin peaks of ice jutting from the viscous surface like tombstones.
Rosskidd glanced at the captain; his eyes held a frightened, unspoken query.
Erkelens nodded, ‘Skunder had some grudge,’ he said. ‘I don’t know what it was. Probably something which you or I wouldn’t understand, but the Canteks are a volatile race. Always fighting wars. I’m not sure we’ll ever get to the bottom of them.’
They stood together on the gently rocking berg for a long time, watching the enigmatic horizon. Eventually, night fell.
Erkelens strolled back to the dome, leaving his mate standing alone under the stony stars.
‘Where the hell is that ship?’ asked Rosskidd of the planet Cantek, irritably.
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New Writings in SF 20 - [Anthology] Page 18