Brentford gave orders that small groups of the crew could go up on the casing, taking it in turns to see the floating island, and the inflatable would be launched with two armed volunteers along with himself and the XO.
The submarine remained some fifty metres clear of the island while the inflatable went across and made fast to the edge of the floating mass. Brentford scrambled up onto the island, looked around, and declared it safe for the others to join him.
It was when they checked the compass that they were in for another surprise - the needle just swung about in a random fashion - Smithson stating that there was no discernable magnetic field, or not enough of one to work the compass.
The surface of the island was covered with a thick layer of something between moss and grass, tough and resilient, below which the entangled mass of the main structure was composed of thick and thin intertwined tendrils of a woody material. The first beetle creature they saw reared up on its hind legs, hissed, and then scurried away, disappearing into a hole in one of the mounds.
They were almost out of sight of the submarine, when a disturbance in the surface made them stop. The greenery lifted up and then split open, a grey snake-like head rose up out of the hole for about half a metre, looked around, and seeing the interlopers on its territory, glared at them with unblinking steel grey eyes. It then opened its mouth to reveal a very unpleasant set of ten centimetre long fangs. Brentford stamped his foot down hard, and the creature withdrew back under the surface. The greenery seemed to come alive as it rearranged itself back into a uniform unbroken covering, with no sign of the disturbance it had undergone.
Several other crawling and slithering creatures were found, all of which ignored them, going about their daily business of finding something to eat and not providing a meal for something else.
“I don't see how such highly developed creatures could have originated on this island,” said Brentford, “it's not big or old enough - so there is a high probability of other islands existing, or even a land mass - which seems more likely.”
“That looks different,” one of the men said, pointing to a clump of bamboo-like growths in the distance, “can we take a look?” Brentford nodded his approval.
The “bamboos” turned out to be about three metres tall, and at the base, as thick as a man's arm. Long thin green leaves sprouted out at intervals all the way up the stem, terminating in what they thought was a flowering head of deep red shoots. One of the men took hold of a stem and tried to bend it outwards from the group, but let go of it when it seemed to twitch in his hand.
“The bloody thing's alive!” he exclaimed, and tried again with the same result.
“I doubt it's alive as we understand the word,” Brentford said, with a smile. “It's just a plant responding to a stimulus - it wants to point upwards, and you tried to stop it - interesting though.”
On the way back to the inflatable, one of the sailors gave a yelp, and disappeared from view beneath the surface. The others rushed to the hole which had opened up to find him standing up to his waist in water, and frantically trying to claw his way up.
Three sets of helping hands soon hauled him out of the hole, only to find his legs covered in a mass of worm-like creatures, which had attached themselves to his legs.
While they were trying to figure out how to rid the man's legs of the multitude of clinging worms, nature took a hand in the matter. One by one, the worms dropped off and wriggled their way back into the darkness of the hole.
“Looks like they can't stand bright sunlight,” said Smithson. “But I don't think they made that hole - something else must have done that, so how many more of them are there? And why were they made?” Somebody just grunted, but that was all.
They made their way back to the inflatable very carefully, boarded the submarine, and then Brentford gave the order to proceed at half power, with a lookout on the conning tower at all times. As the sun dipped below the horizon, photographs were taken of the night sky, so that they could compile a star map to aid navigation - the old maps taken from Earth now being useless - and here there were no satellites for finding their position.
Brentford was just about to bed down for the night, when he received a call from the conning tower watch. Just off to one side, the sea was reported to be boiling. The submarine was stopped, and he went up to see what was happening. A large area, half the submarine's length in diameter, was indeed bubbling, and a sour sulphurous smell hung in the air.
“These moons don't give us enough light to see what's really happening,” Brentford announced, “so we'll stop here, and see what is going on in the morning.”
By dawn, everyone on board had heard about the foaming sea, and were keen to have a look at it. The submarine edged closer to the mass of bubbles, and small groups of the crew were allowed up in turn to see the strange phenomena.
“It's either escaping gas or volcanic activity of some sort,” said Smithson. “And if it's volcanic, we can safely assume there will be more of it - maybe an underwater volcano. It's just possible that it might have formed a land mass somewhere.”
Brentford looked thoughtful for a moment, looking at the few possibilities that were to hand, and then made up his mind as to what he would do.
“As we are stuck here with nothing else to do, we may as well explore the planet, and gather as much information about it as possible - you never know when it might come in useful for our survival. We'd better get the agreement of the whole crew, although in all honesty, I don't think they have much alternative. We have power and water for years, but food is another matter - we'll have to find something to eat before the rations run out. We'll go below, and put it to them,” Brentford said, with authority.
Once it had been explained to them, the whole crew agreed with their CO, but the idea of not being able to return to Earth caused some upset, especially among the younger members.
“We don't know if there is any dry land on which we can live, and possibly grow food - we haven't seen any sign of it so far, but that doesn't mean to say it doesn't exist, somewhere. We'll take the submarine down to see what is causing those bubbles in the sea, and that will give us some information about the structure of this world.”
The submarine backed away a little from the continuous stream of rising bubbles, and then began her journey downwards. They were some three hundred metres below the surface before they saw the chimney from which the hot gases were emerging - at a prodigious rate. The vent itself was only some ten metres across, but the column grew in diameter as they descended - forming a cone-like structure.
Where the walls of the cone were thicker, and therefore cooler, swimming creatures of many kinds flitted about among the rocky bumps and lumps, most of which were adorned with marine growths, and it was these which seemed to be the main source of food for the swimmers, although it wasn't long before they saw a somewhat larger predator catching one of the lesser ones.
At five hundred metres the ocean floor came into sight, and the volcanic cone was now like a small mountain. The marine growth had changed to vast strands of seaweed-like fronds, brown in colour, and with small round globes on their extremities, buoying them up. They swayed gently in the up current caused by the hot walls of the cone some way above. Something had been eating the fronds, because several had been ripped down, their ends in tatters and oozing a dark brown juice.
On the ocean floor, a variety of strange creatures crawled or wriggled their way around, some brightly coloured in the powerful beams of light from the submarine, while others were the same colour as the ocean bottom. One of the “wrigglers” climbed up a frond, and promptly changed colour to match that of the frond, so decreasing its chance of being eaten.
They automatically took pictures of the odd life forms, more from habit than anything else, as there was no way they could get them back to Earth.
The submarine resurfaced, and continued to cruise along on the surface, with Brentford and the XO up in the coning tower, looking out for anyth
ing else unusual.
“I don't understand why the sea is so calm,” said Brentford, “there's only a gentle swell, I would have thought there would be some hefty waves now and again.”
“Well, to put it very simply,” Smithson replied, “we get waves on Earth because of high and low pressure zones, caused by the uneven heating of the land and sea, and added to that is the Coriolis effect, it being caused by the rotation of the Earth. If the land warms up, the air decreases in density and rises, thus pulling in the cooler air around it - this causes the wind. The Coriolis effect will add to this making the air flow veer off to one side, and is the main cause of hurricanes. The fact that the Earth is tilted on its axis adds to the uneven heating of the land masses, giving us our seasons. I would suspect this planet is spinning on its axis, and there are no large land masses to heat up, so there is little or nothing to cause a wind - and so there are little or no waves; The swell is probably due to the pull of the moons.”
“You know, you really are a little fountain of knowledge,” Brentford said, with a grin, “I think you might come in more useful than you think- especially with the problems we'll have coming up in the future.”
“Unidentified object ahead.” came over the intercom system, but Brentford could see nothing with the binoculars. It was some time later when he spotted the smudge on the horizon - and it grew in size as the submarine approached it. By the time Brentford could get a clear view of it, the floating island stretched right across the horizon.
“Half power to fifty metres, and stop,” Brentford said.
This time six piled into the inflatable, armed, and with an assortment of cutting blades, but found getting onto the island a little more difficult as the rim was so much higher.
“Look out for one of those bamboo-like clumps,” said Brentford, “we could use them as probing poles - there may well be more of those hidden holes we found before.”
Before they left the submarine, a tethered weather balloon had been sent up, so they would have something to guide them back should they lose sight of the submarine.
The same assortment of crawling and slithering things they had found on the other island were in abundance, and then they came across their first four legged creature. About the size of a terrestrial cat, but without a tail, it suddenly came into view from behind a tangled mound of the strange wicker like growth which made up the island.
The landing party froze, as did the cat creature - nothing moved for some minutes, until a large beetle-like thing approached the “cat”, getting to within two hundred centimetres of it. Suddenly, a forelimb lashed out, sending the “beetle” flying through the air to land with a thump on a small green mossy mound. Before the “beetle” could regain its feet and scuttle off, the mound disgorged dozens of grey ribbon like bugs, which quickly engulfed the “beetle”, completely hiding it from sight, except for the legs - which twitched a few times, and were then still. A minute or so later, the bugs returned to their hiding place in the mound, and as the last one let go, the empty carapace rolled down the mound to lay still on the grassy like surface of the island.
“Bloody hell,” exclaimed one of the crew - the rest of them were silent.
The silence was broken a few seconds later by another of the crew, who pointed out a clump of the bamboo type poles they needed in the distance. Carefully, they made their way over to the clump to retrieve the necessary “prodding poles”; Brentford warning them of the likelihood that the plant might object. Once they had got used to the plant trying to regain its upright position when bent forward for cutting, they had their six poles.
“Let any juice from the cut ends drain away first,” said the XO, “it might be corrosive to our skin.” Brentford was the only one to raise an eyebrow in acknowledgment of that useful piece of advice.
By now, the submarine was out of sight, but the marker balloon was still clearly visible. They walked on, probing the ground in front of them for hidden holes, but none were found - so far. Two more of the cat-like creatures were seen, but as they were at some distance there was no confrontation, they just slunk away. They had travelled about half a kilometre inland, when Brentford stopped to look for the marker balloon - which was now only visible with the aid of the binoculars.
“We'll go a little further, and then head back, for today,” he said, “unless we find something really interesting.”
They passed several massive clumps of the bamboo plant, which had grown to some ten metres tall, and the base of the stems were almost a metre across. As they left the bamboo clumps, the surface of the island dipped down a little, and then they came to the hole. About two metres across, it went down to the surface of the ocean - some ten metres below. Lying beside the hole was a short pole with a long piece of thin vine-like material attached - and a piece of flesh at its end.
“This I don't believe,” Brentford announced, with astonishment. “And it smacks of intelligence - of some kind or another. We'd better be careful - it looks as if we're not alone on this island.” For the first time, the crew looked frightened.
“Hey, look over there, sir” one of the crew called out, quietly, “those look like huts of some kind.”
CHAPTER 3
FOUR BEEHIVE-LIKE structures could be seen on the rise at the edge of the depression which housed the fishing hole. With weapons at the ready, the party slowly made their way towards the huts, but no one came out to greet them, much to their relief.
It looked as if the bamboos had been purposely planted in a circle, so that as they grew they could be bent inwards and the tops tied together, so forming a shelter; or a clump had had the unwanted stems removed - either way, it looked as though some thinking being had been at work.
One of the crew slowly went up to the nearest hut, and peered in.
“Hey, come and see this,” he said with disbelief in his voice. On the floor, in the middle of the four metre hut, a half metre pile of flat seashells lay, with the remains of what had been a fire - with just a few glowing coals remaining in the centre. Just off to one side, a tall inverted cone shaped shell held a long smouldering platted stick of some material.
“How come they've got fire? We haven't seen any stones or metal, and you can't strike a spark from seashells.” Brentford said.
“Maybe they used friction, sir; you know, like in the Boy Scouts.”
Just then, someone said, “We've got visitors”, and a group of five half metre high creatures were walking towards them. Basically, they were humanoid, that is, a head, two arms, two legs, and a body - but there the resemblance ended. They were completely naked, with a tan coloured skin and no visible hair. Each hand had three fingers with a prehensile thumb, while the feet looked as if there was a sort of web between the toes. Their faces were flat, with two deep set eyes, holes where the ears would normally be, and a small bump with a hole in it replaced the nose, with a thin slit for a mouth; and most surprisingly, there were no sign of genitalia.
The little people advanced to within six metres, and stopped - the two groups just stood there, staring at each other. Suddenly, the little people began talking among themselves, with grunts and wheezes, and then one of them entered a hut, and returned with a flat shell upon which was what looked like a piece of white flesh.
A few more grunts, and the plate bearer walked up to Smithson, and unflinchingly held out the shell.
“It's an offering,” said Brentford, quietly, “take it, and pretend to eat some.”
Smithson took the shell, picked up the piece of fish and went through the motions of biting off a piece, chewed it, and swallowed.
“Anyone got anything to eat?” Brentford asked.
“Yes sir, I have, a piece of chocolate,” One of the crew said.
“Right, give it to the XO. XO, make a big show of breaking off a piece, eat it, and then break off another piece and place it on the shell. Then return the shell to the little chap.”
The ‘little chap’ took the shell, returned to the others, and after
a few grunts and wheezes, picked up the piece of chocolate and put it in his slit of a mouth.
It was difficult to tell if the look on its face was one of delight or disgust, but the chocolate was swallowed, and after a few more grunts, the group broke up. One went to the hole, picked up his fishing rod and lowered the line, while another went back the way they had come, and the remaining three each went into a hut.
“Well, they took that in their stride,” said Smithson. “I'd have been terrified if things had been the other way around.” The others agreed.
“I'll just take a look in one of the huts,” said Brentford, “to see what they are doing, and then we'll head back - the others will wonder what's happened to us.”
The CO approached one of the huts, and peered in. Sitting cross legged on the floor, one of the little people was scraping the scales off a fish with a piece of shell- it looked up at him, and then carried on scraping as though everything was quite normal.
Returning to the others, Brentford gave the order to return to the submarine, and they carefully made their way back, guided by the marker balloon. They each followed in the footsteps of the one ahead, Smithson in the lead, probing the surface for hidden holes, but none were found.
It was some time before everyone on board had heard of what the expedition had found on the floating island, and considerably longer before they got around to believing it.
The submarine surged ahead on the surface, in search of the hoped for land.
Flight of the Tristan Page 2