17 Chain of Command From: Captain To: All Crew Members CHRONOLOGY As there has already been a great deal of unnecessary confusion in this matter, I wish to make the following points: 1. All ship’s records and schedules will remain on Earth Time — corrected for relativistic effects — until the end of the voyage. All clocks and timing systems aboard ship will continue to run on ET. 2. For convenience, ground crews will use Thalassan time (TT) when necessary, but will keep all records in ET with TT in parentheses. 3. To remind you: The duration of the Thalassan Mean Solar Day is 29.4325 hours ET. There are 313.1561 Thalassan days in the Thalassan Sidereal Year, which is divided into 11 months of 28 days. January is omitted from the calendar, but the five extra days to make up the total of 313 follow immediately after the last day (28th) of December. Leap days are intercalated every six years, but there will be none during our stay. 4. Since the Thalassan day is 22% longer than Earth’s, and the number of those days in its year is 14% shorter, the actual length of the Thalassan year is only about 5% longer than Earth’s. As you are all aware, this has one practical convenience, in the matter of birthdays. Chronological age means almost the same on Thalassa as on Earth. A 21 -year-old Thalassan has lived as long as a 20-year old Earth-person. The Lassan calendar starts at First Landing, which was 3109 ET. The current year is 718TT or 754 Earth years later. 5. Finally — and we can also be thankful for this — there is only one Time Zone to worry about on Thalassa. Sirdar Bey (Capt.) 3864.05.26.20.30 ET 718.00.02.1 5.00 TT ‘Who would have thought anything so simple could be so complicated!’ laughed Mirissa when she had scanned the printout pinned up on the Terra Nova Bulletin Board. ‘I suppose this is one of the famous Beybolts. What sort of man is the captain? I’ve never had a real chance of talking to him.’ ‘He’s not an easy person to know,’ Moses Kaldor answered. ‘I don’t think I’ve spoken to him in private more than a dozen times. And he’s the only man on the ship who everyone calls ‘Sir’ – always. Except maybe Deputy Captain Malina, when they’re alone together … Incidentally, that notice was certainly not a genuine Beybolt – it’s too technical. Science Officer Varley and Secretary LeRoy must have drafted it. Captain Bey has a remarkable grasp of engineering principles – much better than I do – but he’s primarily an administrator. And occasionally, when he has to be, commander-in-chief.’ ‘I’d hate his responsibility.’ ‘It’s a job someone has to do. Routine problems can usually be solved by consulting the senior officers and the computer banks. But sometimes a decision has to be made by a single individual, who has the authority to enforce it. That’s why you need a captain. You can’t run a ship by a committee – at least not all the time.’ ‘I think that’s the way we run Thalassa. Can you imagine President Farradine as captain of anything?’ ‘These peaches are delicious,’ Kaldor said tactfully, helping himself to another, though he knew perfectly well that they had been intended for Loren. ‘But you’ve been lucky; you’ve had no real crisis for seven hundred years! Didn’t one of your own people once say: “Thalassa has no history – only statistics”?’ ‘Oh, that’s not true! What about Mount Krakan?’ ‘That was a natural disaster – and hardly a major one. I’m referring to, ah, political crises: civil unrest, that sort of thing.’ ‘We can thank Earth for that. You gave us a Jefferson Mark 3 Constitution – someone once called it Utopia in two megabytes -and it’s worked amazingly well. The program hasn’t been modified for three hundred years. We’re still only on the Sixth Amendment.’ ‘And long may you stay there,’ Kaldor said fervently. ‘I should hate to think that we were responsible for a Seventh.’ ‘If that happens, it will be processed first in the Archives’ memory banks. When are you coming to visit us again? There are so many things I want to show you.’ ‘Not as many as I want to see. You must have so much that will be useful for us on Sagan 2, even though it’s a very different kind of world.’ (‘And a far less attractive one,’ he added to himself.) While they were talking, Loren had come quietly into the reception area, obviously on his way from the games room to the showers. He was wearing the briefest of shorts and had a towel draped over his bare shoulders. The sight left Mirissa distinctly weak at the knees. ‘I suppose you’ve beaten everyone, as usual,’ Kaldor said. ‘Doesn’t it get boring?’ Loren gave a wry grin. ‘Some of the young Lassans show promise. One’s just taken three points off me. Of course, I was playing with my left hand.’ ‘In the very unlikely event he hasn’t already told you,’ Kaldor remarked to Mirissa, ‘Loren was once table-tennis champion on Earth.’ ‘Don’t exaggerate, Moses. I was only about number five – and standards were miserably low towards the end. Any Third Millennium Chinese player would have pulverized me.’ ‘I don’t suppose you’ve thought of teaching Brant,’ Kaldor said mischievously. ‘That should be interesting.’ There was a brief silence. Then Loren answered, smugly but accurately: ‘It wouldn’t be fair.’ ‘As it happens,’ Mirissa said, ‘Brant would like to show you something.’ ‘Oh.’ ‘You said you’ve never been on a boat.’ ‘That’s true.’ ‘Then you have an invitation to join Brant and Kumar at Pier Three – eight-thirty tomorrow morning.’ Loren turned to Kaldor. ‘Do you think it’s safe for me to go?’ he asked in mock seriousness. ‘I don’t know how to swim.’ ‘I shouldn’t worry,’ Kaldor answered helpfully. ‘If they’re planning a one-way trip for you, that won’t make the slightest difference.’
18 Kumar Only one tragedy had darkened Kumar Leonidas’s eighteen years of life; he would always be ten centimetres shorter than his heart’s desire. It was not surprising that his nickname was ‘The Little Lion’ – though very few dared use it to his face. To compensate for his lack of height, he had worked assiduously on width and depth. Many times Mirissa had told him, in amused exasperation, ‘Kumar – if you spent as much time building your brain as your body, you’d be the greatest genius on Thalassa.’ What she had never told him – and scarcely admitted even to herself – was that the spectacle of his regular morning exercises often aroused most unsisterly feelings in her breast as well as a certain jealousy of all the other admirers who had gathered to watch. At one time or other this had included most of Kumar’s age group. Although the envious rumour that he had made love to all the girls and half the boys in Tarna was wild hyperbole, it did contain a considerable element of truth. But Kumar, despite the intellectual gulf between him and his sister, was no muscle-bound moron. If anything really interested him, he would not be satisfied until he had mastered it, no matter how long that took. He was a superb seaman and for over two years, with occasional help from Brant, had been building an exquisite four-metre kayak. The hull was complete, but he had not yet started on the deck. One day, he swore, he was going to launch it and everyone would stop laughing. Meanwhile, the phrase ‘Kumar’s kayak’ had come to mean any unfinished job around Tarna – of which, indeed, there were a great many. Apart from this common Lassan tendency to procrastinate, Kumar’s chief defects were an adventurous nature and a fondness for sometimes risky practical jokes. This, it was widely believed, would someday get him into serious trouble. But it was impossible to be angry with even his most outrageous pranks, for they lacked all malice. He was completely open, even transparent; no one could ever imagine him telling a lie. For this, he could be forgiven much, and frequently was. The arrival of the visitors had, of course, been the most exciting event in his life. He was fascinated by their equipment, the sound, video, and sensory recordings they had brought, the stories they told – everything about them. And because he saw more of Loren than any of the others, it was not surprising that Kumar attached himself to him. This was not a development that Loren altogether appreciated. If there was one thing even more unwelcome than an inconvenient mate, it was that traditional spoilsport, an adhesive kid brother.
19 Pretty Polly ‘I still can’t believe it, Loren,’ Brant Falconer said. ‘You’ve never been in a boat – or on a ship?’ ‘I seem to remember paddling a rubber dinghy across a small pond. That would have been when I was about five years old.’ ‘Then you’ll enjoy this. Not even a swell to upset your stomach. Perhaps we can persuade you to dive with us.’ ‘No, thanks – I’ll take one new experience at a time. And I’ve learned never to get in the way when other men have work to do.’ Brant was right; he was beginning to enjoy himself, as the hydrojets drove the little trimaran almost silently out toward the reef. Yet soon after he had climbed aboard and seen the firm safety of the shoreline rapidly receding, he had known a moment of near panic. Only a sense of the ridiculous had saved him from making a spectacle of himself. He had travelled fifty light-years – the longest journey ever made by human beings – to reach this spot. And now he was worried about the few hundred metres to the nearest land. Yet there was no way in which he could turn down the challenge. As he lay at ease in the stern, watching Falconer at the wheel (how had he acquired that white scar across his shoulders? – oh, yes, he had mentioned something about a crash in a microflyer, years ago …), he wondered just what was going through the Lassan’s mind. It was hard to believe that any human society, even the most enlightened and easygoing, could be totally free from jealousy or some form of sexual possessiveness. Not that there was – so far, alas! – much for Brant to be jealous about. Loren doubted if he had spoken as many as a hundred words to Mirissa; most of them had been in the company of her husband. Correction: on Thalassa, the terms husband and wife were not used until the birth of the first child. When a son was chosen, the mother usually – but not invariably – assumed the name of the father. If the first born was a girl, both kept the mother’s name -at least until the birth of the second, and final, child. There were very few things indeed that shocked the Lassans. Cruelty – especially to children – was one of them. And having a third pregnancy, on this world with only twenty thousand square kilometres of land, was another. Infant mortality was so low that multiple births were sufficient to maintain a steady population. There had been one famous case – the only one in the whole history of Thalassa – when a family had been blessed, or afflicted, with double quintuplets. Although the poor mother could hardly be blamed, her memory was now surrounded with that aura of delicious depravity that had once enveloped Lucrezia Borgia, Messalina, or Faustine. I’ll have to play my cards very, very carefully, Loren told himself. That Mirissa found him attractive, he already knew. He could read it in her expression and in the tone of her voice. And he had even stronger proof in accidental contacts of hand, and soft collisions of body that had lasted longer than were strictly necessary. They both knew that it was only a matter of time. And so, Loren was quite sure, did Brant. Yet despite the mutual tension between them, they were still friendly enough. The pulsation of the jets died away, and the boat drifted to a halt, close to a large glass buoy that was gently bobbing up and down in the water. ‘That’s our power supply,’ Brant said. ‘We only need a few hundred watts, so we can manage with solar cells. One advantage of freshwater seas – it wouldn’t work on Earth. Your oceans were much too salty – they’d have gobbled up kilowatts and kilowatts.’ ‘Sure you won’t change your mind, uncle?’ Kumar grinned. Loren shook his head. Though it had startled him at first, he had now grown quite accustomed to the universal salutation employed by younger Lassans. It was really rather pleasant, suddenly acquiring scores of nieces and nephews. ‘No, thanks. I’ll stay and watch through the underwater window, just in case you get eaten by sharks.’ ‘Sharks!’ Kumar said wistfully. ‘Wonderful, wonderful animals – I wish we had some here. It would make diving much more exciting.’ Loren watched with a technician’s interest as Brant and Kumar adjusted their gear. Compared with the equipment one needed to wear in space, it was remarkably simple – and the pressure tank was a tiny thing that could easily fit in the palm of one hand. ‘That oxygen tank,’ he said, ‘I wouldn’t have thought it could last more than a couple of minutes.’ Brant and Kumar looked at him reproachfully. ‘Oxygen!’ snorted Brant. ‘That’s a deadly poison, at below twenty metres. This bottle holds air – and it’s only the emergency supply, good for fifteen minutes.’ He pointed to the gill-like structure on the backpack that Kumar was already wearing. ‘There’s all the oxygen you need dissolved in seawater, if you can extract it. But that takes energy, so you have to have a powercell to run the pumps and filters. I could stay down for a week with this unit if I wanted to.’ He tapped the greenly fluorescent computer display on his left wrist. ‘This gives all the information I need – depth, powercell status, time to come up, decompression stops – ‘ Loren risked another foolish question. ‘Why are you wearing a facemask, while Kumar isn’t?’ ‘But I am.’ Kumar grinned. ‘Look carefully.’ ‘Oh … I see. Very neat.’ ‘But a nuisance,’ Brant said, ‘unless you practically live in the water, like Kumar. I tried contacts once, and found they hurt my eyes. So I stick to the good old facemask – much less trouble. Ready?’ ‘Ready, skipper.’ They rolled simultaneously over port and starboard sides, their movements so well synchronized that the boat scarcely rocked. Through the thick glass panel set in the keel, Loren watched them glide effortlessly down to the reef. It was, he knew, more than twenty metres down but looked much closer. Tools and cabling had already been dumped there, and the two divers went swiftly to work repairing the broken grids. Occasionally, they exchanged cryptic monosyllables, but most of the time they worked in complete silence. Each knew his job – and his partner – so well that there was no need for speech. Time went very swiftly for Loren; he felt he was looking into a new world, as indeed he was. Though he had seen innumerable video records made in the terrestrial oceans, almost all the life that moved below him now was completely unfamiliar. There were whirling discs and pulsating jellies, undulating carpets and corkscrewing spirals – but very few creatures that, by any stretch of the imagination, could be called genuine fish. Just once, near the edge of vision, he caught a glimpse of a swiftly-moving torpedo which he was almost sure he recognized. If he was correct, it, too, was an exile from Earth. He thought that Brant and Kumar had forgotten all about him when he was startled by a message over the underwater intercom. ‘Coming up. We’ll be with you in twenty minutes. Everything O.K.?’ ‘Fine,’ Loren answered. ‘Was that a fish from Earth I spotted just now?’ ‘I never noticed.’ ‘Uncle’s right, Brant – a twenty-kilo mutant trout went by five minutes ago. Your welding arc scared it away.’ They had now left the sea bed and were slowly ascending along the graceful catenary of the anchor line. About five metres below the surface they came to a halt. ‘This is the dullest part of every dive,’ Brant said. ‘We have to wait here for fifteen minutes. Channel 2, please – thanks – but not quite so loud. The music-to-decompress-by had probably been chosen by Kumar; its jittery rhythm hardly seemed appropriate to the peaceful underwater scene. Loren was heartily glad he was not immersed in it and was happy to switch off the player as soon as the two divers started to move upward again. ‘That’s a good morning’s work,’ Brant said, as he scrambled on to the deck. ‘Voltage and current normal. Now we can go home.’ Loren’s inexpert aid in helping them out of their equipment was gratefully received. Both men were tired and cold but quickly revived after several cups of the hot, sweet liquid the Lassans called tea, though it bore little resemblance to any terrestrial drink of that name. Kumar started the motor and got under way, while Brant scrabbled through the jumble of gear at the bottom of the boat and located a small, brightly coloured box. ‘No, thanks,’ Loren said, as he handed him one of the mildly narcotic tablets. ‘I don’t want to acquire any local habits that won’t be easy to break.’ He regretted the remark as soon as it was made; it must have been prompted by some perverse impulse of the subconscious – or perhaps by his sense of guilt. But Brant had obviously seen no deeper meaning as he lay back, with his hands clasped under his head, staring up into the cloudless sky. ‘You can see Magellan in the daytime,’ Loren said, anxious to change the subject, ‘if you know exactly where to look. But I’ve never done it myself.’ ‘Mirissa has – often,’ Kumar interjected. ‘And she showed me how. You only have to call Astronet for the transit time and then go out and lie on your back. It’s like a bright star, straight overhead, and it doesn’t seem to be moving at all. But if you look away for even a second, you’ve lost it.’ Unexpectedly, Kumar throttled back the engine, cruised at low power for a few minutes, then brought the boat to a complete halt. Loren glanced around to get his bearings, and was surprised to see that they were now at least a kilometre from Tarna. There was another buoy rocking in the water beside them, bearing a large letter P and carrying a red flag. ‘Why have we stopped?’ asked Loren. Kumar chuckled and started emptying a small bucket over the side. Luckily, it had been sealed until now; the contents looked suspiciously like blood but smelled far worse. Loren moved as tar away as possible in the limited confines of the boat. ‘Just calling on an old friend,’ Brant said very softly. ‘Sit still -don’t make any noise. She’s quite nervous.’ She? thought Loren. What’s going on? Nothing whatsoever happened for at least five minutes; Loren would not have believed that Kumar could have remained still for so long. Then he noticed that a dark, curved band had appeared, a few metres from the boat, just below the surface of the water. He traced it with his eyes, and realized that it formed a ring, completely encircling them. He also realized, at about the same moment, that Brant and Kumar were not watching it; they were watching him. So they’re trying to give me a surprise, he told himself; well, we’ll see about that … Even so, it took all of Loren’s willpower to stifle a cry of sheer terror when what seemed to be a wall of brilliantly – no, putrescently – pink flesh emerged from the sea. It rose, dripping, to about half the height of a man and formed an unbroken barrier around them. And as a final horror, its upper surface was almost completely covered with writhing snakes coloured vivid reds and blues. An enormous tentacle-fringed mouth had risen from the deep and was about to engulf them … Yet clearly they were in no danger; he could tell that from his companions’ amused expressions. ‘What in God’s – Krakan’s – name is that?’ he whispered, trying to keep his voice steady. ‘You reacted fine,’ Brant said admiringly. ‘Some people hide in the bottom of the boat. It’s Polly – for polyp. Pretty Polly. Colonial invertebrate – billions of specialized cells, all cooperating. You had very similar animals on Earth though I don’t believe they were anything like as large.’ ‘I’m sure they weren’t,’ Loren answered fervently. ‘And if you don’t mind me asking – how do we get out of here?’ Brant nodded to Kumar, who brought the engines up to full-power. With astonishing speed for something so huge, the living wall around them sank back into the sea, leaving nothing but an oily ripple on the surface. ‘The vibration’s scared it,’ Brant explained. ‘Look through the viewing glass – now you can see the whole beast.’ Below them, something like a tree-trunk ten metres thick was retracting towards the seabed. Now Loren realized that the ‘snakes’ he had seen wriggling on the surface were slender tentacles; back in their normal element they were waving weightlessly again, searching the waters for what – or whom -they might devour. ‘What a monster!’ he breathed, relaxing for the first time in many minutes. A warm feeling of pride – even exhilaration -swept over him. He knew that he had passed another test; he had won Brant’s and Kumar’s approval and accepted it with gratitude. ‘Isn’t that thing – dangerous?’ he asked. ‘Of course; that’s why we have the warning buoy.’ ‘Frankly, I’d be tempted to kill it.’ ‘Why?’ Brant asked, genuinely shocked. ‘What harm does it do?’ ‘Well – surely a creature that size must catch an enormous number of fish.’ ‘Yes, but only Lassan – not fish that we can eat. And here’s the interesting thing about it. For a long time we wondered how it could persuade fish – even the stupid ones here – to swim into its maw. Eventually we discovered that it secretes some chemical lure, and that’s what started us thinking about electric traps. Which reminds me …” Brant reached for his comset. ‘Tarna Three calling Tarna Autorecord – Brant here. We’ve fixed the grid. Everything functioning normally. No need to acknowledge. End message.’ But to everyone’s surprise, there was an immediate response from a familiar voice. ‘Hello, Brant, Dr Lorenson. I’m happy to hear that. And I’ve got some interesting news for you. Like to hear it?’ ‘Of course, Mayor,’ Brant answered as the two men exchanged glances of mutual amusement. ‘Go ahead.’ ‘Central Archives has dug up something surprising. All this has happened before. Two hundred fifty years ago, they tried to build a reef out from North Island by electroprecipitation – a technique that had worked well on Earth. But after a few weeks, the underwater cables were broken – some of them stolen. The matter was never followed up because the experiment was a total failure, anyway. Not enough minerals in the water to make it worthwhile. So there you are – you can’t blame the Conservers. They weren’t around in those days.’ Brant’s face was such a study in astonishment that Loren burst out laughing. ‘And you tried to surprise me!’ he said. ‘Well, you certainly proved that there were things in the sea that I’d never imagined. ‘But now it looks as if there are some things that you never imagined, either.’