Daniel Leary, floating with the corpse of a sweep the size of a yacht. Well, he hadn’t let himself get so fat that there’d be doubt about which was which.
He chuckled, a mistake in that it put off his timing and he breathed water. Maybe a good thing anyway; humor was never out of place in a tight situation.
Besides, he was close to his goal. He could smell the mud, though the toe he dabbed down didn’t find bottom. A few feet more—
Something whacked him in the chest. This was a real blow, not the squirming touch of a creature riding the currents. Daniel’s head went under water before he could close his mouth.
Fear of someone on shore watching for a disturbance didn’t check Daniel’s deep lizard-brain fear of drowning. He rose, flailing and spluttering.
He couldn’t see anything on the surface. Had he struck a submerged treetrunk? It’d felt solid enough.
Treading water carefully in hope that his thighs wouldn’t pack up on him now, Daniel felt in front of him with his outstretched left hand. He didn’t touch anything.
He stroked forward again. Something punched him on the left side. As he lurched, he took another underwater blow to the center of his chest.
Daniel knew what the problem was now, and he knew what to do about it. He just wasn’t sure that he’d be able to do what was necessary in his present physical condition.
There was a colony of giant tube-worms on his side of the channel, harmless filter-feeders. They rose from their tunnels after dark to sweep the water about them with feathery gills which they withdrew into their bodies every few minutes to ingest the microorganisms trapped in the gills’ netlike structure.
The problem was that though the worms lived in colonies, each protected its immediate hunting ground by butting away rivals which tried to tunnel into the mud too close. These worms thought Daniel was one of their own kind, and they didn’t intend to let him settle in the territory they’d already claimed.
Daniel turned and paddled feebly parallel to the shore. He’d used a good deal of his strength fighting the tide when it tried to push him in this direction; now when he could use some help he was in quiet water.
He could really use some help. Well, so could his detachment. What Adele and the ratings had was Daniel Leary, and on his honor that would be enough.
Twice he turned toward shore again. Twice the clamped gill covers of an outraged worm prodded him back. He giggled: Kostroman tube worms had a sense of honor very similar to that of Cinnabar nobles. All this time he’d thought society on the two planets was very different.
He supposed the pain in his lungs and shoulders was giving him hallucinations. Well, his present reality had very little to recommend it.
Daniel wasn’t fully aware that his fourth attempt to reach shore had succeeded until his left hand dug into mud. He collapsed, still in the water, and dragged sobbing breaths into his lungs. It was nearly a minute before he managed to crawl out of the lagoon and stand upright.
A bush rubbed him; its leaves felt like sandpaper. He ignored them and waved toward the shore he’d left a lifetime ago. Woetjans would be watching through the goggles.
Daniel tested the fishline. It still had the tension of its own full length. Slowly, careful not to snap it now against an unseen snag, Daniel began to hand in the line and the heavier cord that his ratings would by now have fastened to its end.
A bird whose wings were a meter across swooped over the lagoon with a coo-o-o, then vanished again in the overhanging trees. Adele jumped; the Kostromans across the twenty feet of water from her bellowed and sprang away from their campfire. One of them got to his feet and hurled a stone into the night when he was sure that the creature was gone.
The thugs settled again. One of them tried to build up the fire, but the wood he added was damp. The flames sank to a hissing glow and the rest of the gang snarled curses at him. They were very nervous.