VI
After a few days of steady northward travel, they made the first of many detours. Fog and mist did not deceive the northfinders carried by the Fleet, but this tune a violent storm lay across their course. At about the same tune the sea became noticeably cooler, as though chilled by melting ice. Paradoxically, however, at the same time it started to teem with a wider range of life-forms than could be found in the waters nearer Ripar, from the tiniest qrill which Barratong scooped up in a shell and showed to Yockerbow through a single-lensed microscope that magnified better than ten-score tunes, up to giant schools of sharq. The Fleet accorded these a respectfully wide berth also, not because they were a threat themselves, but because they in turn were hunted by the fiercest predator in these waters, the huge and solitary gulletfish whose mindless charge could rupture the tubules of even the largest junq. For amusement, elderly mariners jelled the ichor of the new recruits by regaling them with tales of what it was like to meet a gulletfish in mid-ocean and try to make it charge a barbed prong. It was worst in the dark, they said, when all one had to guide the eye was the ripple of phosphorescence as it rounded to for yet another onslaught.
“How rich in life the planet is!” murmured Yockerbow, and Barratong gave him a sardonic dip.
“Who says only this planet? Some think the stars may be alive, or harbor life, because living creatures are always warmer than their environment! Myself, though, I suspect the reason we don’t find such a plethora of fish in tropical waters is that life requires a differential of heat, the way your pumps require a differential of level, and as the water becomes warmer the task of survival grows harder, just as when it grows extremely cold. What about that?”
Yockerbow felt he would never grow accustomed to the way the admiral kept tossing out provocative ideas, even though he was modest about the source of them, and always gave credit to anonymous scholars said to have been met in distant places. By this time, however, Yockerbow was beginning to doubt their existence. Barratong combined his restless genius with a diffidence more proper to a shy young apprentice.
He said after a pause for thought, “It makes sense to invoke a limit at either end of any scale of events. Just as there is no life in solid ice, so there is probably none in the stars. After all, a living creature which is trapped in wildfire dies, and certain persons have conducted experiments wherein a small animal and some burning fuel were closed up together, and the animal died and the fuel did not burn out.”
“I’ve heard of such cruelty,” Barratong said musingly. “I personally would not care to witness it, but I’m glad in a sense that someone could bear to … Ah, there is so much to know, my friend! And so much that has already been discovered in one place, yet never conveyed to another! But we have spoken of such matters already.”
“As we have,” rumbled Ulgrim, approaching from the stern with Arranth—somehow shyly—following him. “Admiral, do we plan to put in at any harbors before we reach the polar circle? The lady has convinced me that it would be of interest were I to peek through her big spyglass on stable ground.”
Behind his back Arranth gave a moue, as to tell Yockerbow, “See? There are some who respect my learning even if you don’t!”
Whether Barratong noticed or not, he gave no sign. He merely chaffed Ulgrim, who was still tall but whose mantle showed the tell-tale wrinklings of age.
“What youth and good looks may do to reform a character! You never cared to come ashore with me in other climes to hear what the local philosophers had to say, or view their instruments and their experiments! Lady Arranth, I bow to you; whatever else you may be schooled in, you certainly display a vast knowledge of people’s nature! But the answer’s no!”
Abruptly he extended to his maximum height, a third or more above his usual stature, and even though this brought him barely equal with Yockerbow and Ulgrim, the effect was as shocking as though he had grown taller than mythical Jing. One more element was added to Yockerbow’s understanding of this admiral’s dominance over his enormous Fleet.