Second Officer Yu and his two companions, waiting with their improvised weapons outside the locked door of the bridge, had perhaps been given the toughest assignment of all. They had no monitor screens to tell them what was happening, and had to rely on messages from the wardroom. Nor had there been anything through the spy mike, which was hardly surprising. Chang and McCullen had very little time or need for conversation.
The touchdown was superb, with hardly a jolt. Galaxy sank a few extra metres, then bobbed up again, to float vertically and – thanks to the weight of the engines – in the upright position.
It was then that the listeners heard the first intelligible sounds through the spy mike.
‘You maniac, Rosie,’ said Chang’s voice, more in resigned exhaustion than anger. ‘I hope you’re satisfied. You’ve killed us all.’
There was one pistol shot, then a long silence.
Yu and his colleagues waited patiently, knowing that something was bound to happen soon. Then they heard the locking levers being unlatched, and gripped the spanners and metal bars they were carrying. She might get one of them, but not all -The door swung open, very slowly.
‘Sorry,’ said Second Officer Chang. ‘I must have passed out for a minute.’
Then, like any reasonable man, he fainted again.
31
The Sea of Galilee
I can never understand how a man could become a doctor, Captain Laplace told himself. Or an undertaker, for that matter. They have some nasty jobs to do…
‘Well, did you find anything?’
‘No, Skipper. Of course, I don’t have the right sort of equipment. There are some implants that you could only locate through a microscope – or so I’m told. They could only be very short range, though.’
‘Perhaps to a relay transmitter somewhere in the ship – Floyd’s suggested we make a search. You took fingerprints and – any other idents?’
‘Yes – when we contact Ganymede, we’ll beam them up, with her papers. But I doubt if we’ll ever know who Rosie was, or who she was acting for. Or why, for God’s sake.’
‘At least she showed some human instincts,’ said Laplace thoughtfully. ‘She must have known she’d failed, when Chang pulled the ABORT lever. She could have shot him then, instead of letting him land.’
‘Much good that will do us, I’m afraid. Let me tell you something that happened when Jenkins and I put the cadaver out through the refuse dump.’
The doctor pursed his lips in a grimace of distaste.
‘You were right, of course – it was the only thing to do. Well, we didn’t bother to attach any weights – it floated for a few minutes – we watched to see if it would clear the ship – and then…’
The doctor seemed to be struggling for words.
‘What, dammit?’
‘Something came up out, of the water, Like a parrot beak, but about a hundred times bigger. It took – Rosie – with one snap, and disappeared. We have some impressive company here; even if we could breathe outside, I certainly wouldn’t recommend swimming -‘
‘Bridge to Captain,’ said the officer on duty, ‘Big disturbance in the water – camera three – I’ll give you the picture.’
‘That’s the thing I saw!’ cried the doctor. He felt a sudden chill at the inevitable, ominous thought: I hope it’s not back for more.
Suddenly, a vast bulk broke through the surface of the ocean and arched into the sky. For a moment, the whole monstrous shape was suspended between air and water.
The familiar can be as shocking as the strange – when it is in the wrong place. Both captain and doctor exclaimed simultaneously: ‘It’s a shark!’
There was just time to notice a few subtle differences – in addition to the monstrous parrot-beak – before the giant crashed back into the sea. There was an extra pair of fins – and there appeared to be no gills. Nor were there any eyes, but on either side of the beak there were curious protuberances that might be some other sense organs.
‘Convergent evolution, of course,’ said the doctor. ‘Same problems, same solutions, on any planet. Look at Earth. Sharks, dolphins, ichthyosaurs – all oceanic predators must have the same basic design. That beak puzzles me, though -‘
‘What’s it doing now?’
The creature had surfaced again, but now it was moving very slowly, as if exhausted after that one gigantic leap. In fact, it seemed to be in trouble – even in agony; it was beating its tail against the sea, without attempting to move in any definite direction.
Suddenly, it vomited its last meal, turned belly up, and lay wallowing lifelessly in the gentle swell.
‘Oh my God,’ whispered the Captain, his voice full of revulsion. ‘I think I know what’s happened.’
‘Totally alien biochemistries,’ said the doctor; even he seemed shaken by the sight. ‘Rosie’s claimed one victim, after all.’
The Sea of Galilee was, of course, named after the man who had discovered Europa – as he in turn had been named after a much smaller sea on another world.
It was a very young sea, being less than fifty years old; and, like most new-born infants, could be quite boisterous. Although the Europan atmosphere was still too thin to generate real hurricanes, a steady wind blew from the surrounding land towards the tropical zone at the point above which Lucifer was stationary. Here, at the point of perpetual noon, the water was continually boiling – though at a temperature, in this thin atmosphere, barely hot enough to make a good cup of tea.
Luckily, the steamy, turbulent region immediately beneath Lucifer was a thousand kilometres away; Galaxy had descended in a relatively calm area, less than a hundred kilometres from the nearest land. At peak velocity, she could cover that distance in a fraction of a second; but now, as she drifted beneath the low-hanging clouds of Europa’s permanent overcast, land seemed as far-off as the remotest quasar. To make matters worse – if possible – the eternal off-shore wind was taking her further out to sea. And even if she could manage to ground herself on some virgin beach of this new world, she might be no better off than she was now.
But she would be more comfortable; spaceships, though admirably watertight, are seldom seaworthy. Galaxy was floating in a vertical position, bobbing up and down with gentle but disturbing oscillations; half the crew was already sick.
Captain Laplace’s first action, after he had been through the damage reports, was to appeal for anyone with experience in handling boats – of any size or shape. It seemed reasonable to suppose that among thirty astronautical engineers and space scientists there should be a considerable amount of seafaring talent, and he immediately located five amateur sailors and even one professional – Purser Frank Lee who had started his career with the Tsung shipping lines and then switched to space.
Although pursers were more accustomed to handling accounting machines (often, in Frank Lee’s case, a two-hundred-year-old ivory abacus) than navigational instruments, they still had to pass exams in basic seamanship. Lee had never had a chance of testing his maritime skills; now, almost a billion kilometres from the South China Sea, his time had come.
‘We should flood the propellant tanks,’ he told the Captain. ‘Then we’ll ride lower and won’t be bobbing up and down so badly.’
It seemed foolish to let even more water into the ship, and the Captain hesitated.
‘Suppose we run aground?’
No one made the obvious comment ‘What difference will it make?’ Without any serious discussion, it had been assumed that they would be better off on land – if they could ever reach it.
‘We can always blow the tanks again. We’ll have to do that anyway, when we reach shore, to get the ship into a horizontal position. Thank God we have power…’
His voice trailed off; everyone knew what he meant. Without the auxiliary reactor which was now running the life-support systems, they would all be dead within hours. Now – barring a breakdown – the ship could sustain them indefinitely.
Ultimately, of course, they would starve; they had just had dramatic proof that there was no nourishment, but only poison, in the seas of Europa.
At least they had made contact with Ganymede, so that the entire human race now knew their predicament. The best brains in the Solar System would now be trying to save them. If they failed, the passengers and crew of Galaxy would have the consolation of dying in the full glare of publicity.
IV
AT THE WATER HOLE
32
Diversion
‘The latest news,’ said Captain Smith to his assembled passengers, ‘is that Galaxy is afloat, and in fairly good condition. One crew member – a woman steward – has been killed – we don’t know the details – but everyone else is safe.
‘The ship’s systems are all working; there are a few leaks, but they’ve been controlled. Captain Laplace says there’s no immediate danger, but the prevailing wind is driving them further away from the mainland, towards the centre of dayside. That’s not a serious problem – there are several large islands they’re virtually certain to reach first. At the moment they’re ninety kilometres from the nearest land. They’ve seen some large marine animals, but they show no sign of hostility.