“Has the shadow of the Far-God appeared on the face of the Night-God yet?”
“Yes,” replied Richard. “Zouave’s shadow has started across the surface and soon will be one-third the way toward the center of Gargantua.”
“Then shortly we should see the little shadow of the Near-God appear,” said Pink-Orb with certainty.
Shortly after, Richard saw a tiny bite being taken out of the giant planet. “Here it comes,” he said, as the bite turned into a circle. It’s only a little more than half the size of Zouave’s shadow. But it’s moving a lot faster.”
Manannan geyser, which had been grumbling noisily off in the distance, now raised its gushing tower higher. Richard was tempted to pull his hand loose from Pink-Orb’s tentacle to get his sextant, but forbore for the alien’s sake.
“Where are the two moon shadows now?” asked Pink-Orb some time later.
“Zouave’s shadow is now nearly two-thirds the way to the center, while Zuni’s shadow is one-third,” reported Richard.
“Then look for another shadow,” said Pink-Orb. “That will be the shadow of Ice.”
The shadow of Zulu quickly moved onto the now fully illuminated face of Gargantua toward the center, rapidly catching up with the slower moving shadows that had preceded it. The phrase “Racing with the moon…” came unbidden to Richard’s mind.
“Zulu’s shadow is significantly larger than Zouave’s,” remarked Richard. “I thought Zulu was slightly smaller in diameter than Zouave.”
“It is,” replied Pink-Orb. “But you forget that Barnard is not a point source of light. The shadows of the moons you see on the Night-God are cross-sections of the umbra — the shadow cones behind each moon where Barnard is in total eclipse. Although Ice initially forms a shadow cone with a smaller diameter base than the Far-God, it is closer to the Night-God, so its shadow cone is cut closer to its base, which produces a larger shadow.”
“Oh!” said Richard, finally realizing what the professor had been trying to teach him in that “Astronomy for Geologists” course he had taken long ago.
The geyser now sounded a full-throated roar that continued to grow louder and louder as the rising spout of boiling-hot water shot higher and higher from the surface and into the upper atmosphere. Billowing steam clouds occasionally blocked the view overhead, but through the clouds Richard could see the conjunction rapidly coming to a climax.
“The three shadows are all approaching the center,” he reported. “Their shadows are beginning to merge … they are just one elongated shadow now … conjunction!” His exclamation was nearly drowned out by the steady roar from Manannan. Richard’s hand hurt, and he suddenly realized that Pink-Orb had been squeezing it hard in excitement. He squeezed back, and Pink-Orb, realizing that it had been holding onto the human all this time, quickly released its grasp. Richard reached out, gently took the tentacle back into his hand, and proceeded to narrate the rest of the three moon eclipse to his blind companion.
* * *
Deep in Manannan Lake, the three flouwen swam strongly to the rocky bottom, keeping up a running commentary on things they spotted of possible interest to the listening biologists.
*Lots of weed, here. Hot water bubbling up through sand. Weeds full of funny little fish. All mouth and eyes, not much tail.*
“Weed-dwellers, I guess,” said Cinnamon. “In relative safety, so they don’t need much but eyes and tail.”
#Small coelashark, there under rock,# mentioned Little Purple. #Came out of hole, but went back quick.#
“A solitary?” questioned Deirdre over the comm link from Dragonfly.
#Wait. I look close.#
The flouwen used a handy bit of stiff weed to poke exploratively into the recess.
#Just one. No sign of egg-things.#
Little Purple had been curious about eggs, and Deirdre had explained to the flouwen that eggs could come in peculiar shapes. The suit-clad aliens continued their search and met several small coelasharks, circling a thick tuft of sea grass. They paused to watch, and detected within the weeds a fat round-bodied creature somewhat like a newt. It was obviously the prey of the small coelasharks, and the only question was — could one of them succeed in taking it without injury from its competitors. Suddenly, the largest of the three darted in and seized the small lizard in its teeth, gulping frantically as it fled for safety. However, taking advantage of the fact that the captor’s teeth were occupied, the disappointed pair lunged after it and bit viciously at the flailing tail.
*Hunh! These things never cooperate!* observed Little Red. *They always fight!*
As they wandered closer to the major volcanic vent fields on the side of the underwater sea mount that surrounded Manannan geyser, the water around the flouwen began to move up slope.
Simultaneously there came an announcement from Katrina: “The next eruption is beginning. Be sure to place yourselves in a secure position.” The aliens moved to find something interesting to watch during the eruption. Little Purple was lucky enough to spot a rough-faced rock with holes in it, in which two coelashark heads were visible. They seemed unaware of each other, but Little Purple intended to stay close by, to see if the pair engaged in any kind of mating behavior.
Little Red watched the approach of a large coelashark, with a missing right rear leg. As it moved into the region of stronger currents, the coelashark sank to the floor of the ocean, picked up a ballast stone with its tentacles, and proceeded on three stubby legs. Little Red remembered seeing that behavior before, and decided to follow discreetly, picking up a ballast rock of his own as he did so. Perhaps this walking mode signified a behavioral change related to reproduction.
Little White found a solitary coelashark in a small enclosed haven among the rocks, waving its tail in determined passes over the surface. Having been warned by Cinnamon to look for this “nestmaking” behavior, Little White wedged himself between two rocks and settled down to watch. Though the water, the rumbling sound of the erupting geyser grew louder.
Gradually and slowly, but with never a pause in the increasing tug, the up-slope flow of the water pulled on the forms of all the myriad creatures of the sea floor. Uprooted tufts of grass and weed began to tumble slowly along, and small, darting fish began to work at heading away from the current. Little Purple, secure behind a barrier of rock, saw the two coelasharks he had been observing withdraw deeper into their sanctuaries, still paying no attention to each other. Little White’s tail-wagging specimen suddenly twisted head to tail, and the savage mouth opened and seized the desperately wriggling legged shellfish which had tried to escape by burrowing into the sand.
^Not egg-laying. Just more eating.^ concluded Little White through his suit imp.
The large three-legged coelashark still continued its ponderous march up slope, and Little Red thought himself unobserved, until the massive head suddenly swerved, and shot a bitterly hostile glare at the flouwen.
“When you’re close enough, monster, I’ll tear you apart!”
Little Red recoiled, but only for an instant. *Ho! You the monster! Even uglier than the others, with only three legs!* Swapping of insults was something Little Red secretly enjoyed, and he increased his speed to continue the exchange.
“I lost a leg, but the other lost more than that! I was hungry that time. Nothing was left but a blob of bloody water. And, speaking of bloody blobs…” The four tentacles dropped the ballast rock and the coelashark lunged with spasmodic speed at Little Red, who slithered adroitly out of reach. The tug of the water was strong, now, and the coelashark’s three legs dug into the sand in the effort to control its pace, as it regained its rock. Little Red’s powerful body flexed within his suit, as he strove to stay equal with, but not too close to his adversary.
“Brainless blob! One good slurp and you’ll be part of my gut!”
*Stupid and ugly! All mouth and no brains!*
To either side of them, small coelasharks occasionally appeared, in frantic flight from the steadily increasing pull of t
he geyser. But the big coelashark, with its flouwen escort, continued to move steadily up the seamount in the direction of the geyser. Little Red had mentally shelved the question of why any of the coelasharks avoided this lemming-like march, determined to find a way to make the foul-mouthed creature reveal, in some fashion, why it was so bent on suicide.
*Got worms in your ugly mouth! They crawling and itching? Hunting for your brain?*
The coelashark ignored Little Red’s words and continued to plod upward. The time of the peak tide was close at hand, and the geyser burst into its full-throated roar. The up-slope current surged stronger and Little Red was in the process of exchanging his ballast rock for a larger one, when suddenly the coelashark said calmly, “I must go.” The giant fish deliberately dropped its ballast rock and allowed itself to be drawn rapidly up slope into the geyser.
Little Red, surprised by this behavior, and hampered by his suit, fumbled the exchange of rocks he had been attempting, and found himself with no ballast at all, being drawn helplessly up slope behind the coelashark.
*The geyser! I’m caught in the geyser! Help!* Hearing the cry for help, the suit imp activated the combined sonar and radio distress signal mechanism on the flouwen’s drysuit.
Little Red realized that the pace at which he was being sucked up the submarine mount meant he had only seconds before he would be drawn into the boiling hot water of the geyser itself, and he must save himself if he could. He unzipped his suit and poured himself free, leaving the signaling device to continue its alarm. Once in the familiar coolness of the sea, Little Red assumed his most efficient swimming shape and headed both down-slope against the current and outward toward the surface, trying to get to the surface layers of water forming the cooler shell of the spout. Perhaps he would be lucky enough to break out of the geyser column at a point where he could surf down the side to safety.
With growing alarm, he realized the returns from his frantic sonar chirps indicated that while the surface of the water was only slowly getting closer, the sea bottom was rapidly getting further away. He was rising rapidly up inside the geyser! Desperately, Little Red fought his way to the surface and burst into the alien air. Blind now, his sonar useless, and his vision lenses left behind in the suit, he had no idea how far up he was, but he knew he was falling — and falling — and falling.
He spread himself into a canopy, hoping to catch enough of the thin air to slow his descent. Dismayed, he felt his speed increasing. He could only hope that the suit was broadcasting his plight.
“Emergency Message!” Thomas’s imp shouted in his ear. Coming over the emergency channel into Victoria‘s communication center was the repeating, mechanical voice of a suit imp.
“Mayday! Little Red needs help! Mayday!”
Thomas activated the radio direction-finders on the console before him and instantly understood the problem when he saw that the suit was broadcasting from a point nearly a kilometer above the lake.
“All personnel! Emergency! Look upward along the geyser! Little Red was caught! Watch where he falls!”
“I see him!” shouted David from the viewing lounge below. “My God, it looks like he’s … hang-gliding!”
“I see him too!” called in Richard from his position on Pink-Orb’s carpet. “He’s going over me at about a half-kilometer up. He should land on the ice somewhere beyond Victoria.”
Although Little Red had spread his considerable mass almost tissue-thin, and had used the slight amount of lift that he thus obtained to get himself clear of the geyser, he could not capture enough air to slow his descent much. Little Red, with his superior IQ and intimate knowledge of fluid flows, knew all about hydrodynamic instabilities forced by steady flows between fluids of different densities, and knew exactly what was happening to his dense fluid body as it started to flutter uncontrollably in the increasingly strong wind passing by it, and knew precisely when he would start to break up into blobs and even roughly how big the pieces would be — but there was nothing he could do about it.
The body of Little Red fell to the surface in dozens of blobs of red jelly scattered widely over the crusted snow. The blobs were not large enough to be intelligent, so the personality of Little Red was gone. Fortunately, the blobs were sentient enough to protect themselves by rocking up their surfaces to prevent liquid loss, while conserving the ammonia from those tissues inside the hardened surface. The outside layers of cells soon froze, but the ammonia-water mixture bathing the cells in the inside of each blob had a freezing point that even the coldest night on Zulu could not reach.
Arielle flung the Dragonfly in the direction of the distress signal at top speed. Shirley activated the infrared scanners in the viewing ports on each side, and she and Joe looked for telltale warm spots on one side of the plane, while Sam and Joe looked on the other side.
“I see a number of small warm spots on my side,” reported Sam. “In a large oval-shaped region, about a half-kilometer wide and a kilometer long.”
“How many spots?” asked Shirley, not really wanting to know.
“Forty-two large ones,” replied Joe.
“Drop us off here, Arielle,” said Sam, putting his finger on the touch screen in front of him. “Then go get the others.”
Arielle glanced at her navigation display, with its green blotch indicating the place, grunted assent, and the Dragonfly headed for the spot.
“We’ll need something to carry the pieces in,” said Katrina. “I’ll get out the large size sample bags.”
“After we get in the airlock, have the airlock imp squirt in a little ammonia water in the bags. It’ll help keep the pieces alive,” added Cinnamon.
“We’ll be needing something bigger, to recombine all the pieces,” added Deirdre. “I’ll break out a rescue bag. That should be big enough.”
The Dragonfly fluttered to a halt and disgorged five suited figures, who spread out away from the airplane, which lifted into the sky and headed for the lander on the distant horizon.
At the Victoria, George, Thomas, David quickly suited up and slid down the winch rope to the surface, while Richard stretched his long legs to cover the ground between Pink-Orb’s area and the waiting Dragonfly as fast as possible. They clambered into the open airlock and the plane took off again immediately. Inside the airlock the airlock imp was securing a partially open rescue bag to some handholds and squirting in ammonia-water.
Once at the site, they joined the others, spreading out methodically in hopes of reaching the shattered alien while its fragments still survived. Arielle went aloft, where Joe operated the infrared scanners and directed the search crew through their imps. Very soon there was a triumphant shout from Richard.
“I’ve found a big chunk!”
He put the crusty blob of red jelly into the sample bag, where it quickly dissolved in the ammonia water. Sheets of dead surface tissue fluttered to the bottom of the bag, but most of the red blob was now fluid and active.
*WOW! FLY!*
“And it’s alive!”
That put new heart into the others; they knew that Little Red could be restored, a small piece at a time. Bit by bit, directed by Joe from above, they picked up more blobs. Soon they each had one or more, and Arielle dove down to the surface and flew along the search line. As she hovered to a halt near each searcher, the living contents of the sample bags were emptied into the waiting rescue bag where they instantly joined together, becoming more and more Little Red as the blob of red jelly grew in size.
*I fly!* came a reasonable imitation of Little Red’s voice out of the rescue bag.
“You crashed, is more like it,” replied Cinnamon, as she dumped her second bag into the waiting container. “There are still dozens of pieces of you scattered all across the countryside.”
*Find me! Find all of me!* the red blob called out. Then after a long pause, a much quieter voice asked, *Please?*
“Reiki’s lessons on Prometheus must have sunk in,” muttered Cinnamon, but the magic word worked, and she returned t
o the cold and tedious task of searching the ice with new vigor.
It would take time, and the collection of many more of Little Red’s blobs of tissue to restore the alien to his former strength and intelligence, but it would be done. The humans headed out to the farther reaches of Little Red’s calamity, to find and rescue still more of his shattered flesh. The force of his crash had spread his body over a wide area, and the humans were soon out of sight of each other, although all could see the Dragonfly overhead.
Bending over, intent upon the ground, Deirdre was suddenly shocked to see booted footprints in the snow in front of her! Her Irish bones knew an instant of superstitious fear, and then she laughed. She was standing in the area of the snow they had come “fishing” in previously — for freshly-killed coelasharks. Now, as she looked about, she saw again the shapeless lump of the decaying coelashark — she had left a marker there, to investigate later if she had the chance. She walked over to inspect it, and was startled again. There was no trace of coelashark, decaying or otherwise. But there was an icerug! It was the smallest she had yet seen.
Quickly she looked about her, searching for this infant’s parent, but there was nothing in sight. With luck, she would have time to inspect the little one carefully before its guardian returned. She began the soft wordless crooning that worked so well to calm a frightened animal, from a panicky Rocheworld rogue to an agitated Foxx in free fall. Slowly the clutching tentacles of the icerug node stopped their searching gyration, and fastened firmly around her gloved hand, and the eye regarded her with seeming interest.
With the other hand, Deirdre gently probed the dense velvety foliage of its carpet, and lifted up its edges. This tiny icerug seemed to be completely unattached to the ice.
Ocean Under the Ice Page 32