There was more than human activity going on in the harbor. Ripples crossed the water in faintly starlit Vs. By switching to thermal imaging Daniel could see the fish that cruised beneath the surface, browsing the microorganisms which bloomed in the nutrient-rich sewage borne here by the city’s canals.
Daniel was focused on a fish longer than his arm. A leatherfin, he thought, though the Aglaia’s natural history database hadn’t been specific to Kostroma.
A shadow flicked in and out of the goggles’ present narrow focus. The water exploded in foam.
Daniel reflexively switched back to a normal field of view while remaining in the infrared spectrum. A whiptail had been sitting on a bollard not far from him. It had just glided out over the water and snagged the fish with a stroke of its barbed, prehensile tail.
“Bravo!” Daniel shouted. A perfectly executed attack on a worthy opponent!
Flapping laboriously with the fish snugged close to its belly, the furry-winged “bird” swept in broad circuit around the harbor. The whiptail’s vans flared like stage curtains as it landed on a freighter’s foremast. Its lower beak stabbed once, severing its victim’s notocord at the base of the skull; then it began to feed on strips daintily pincered from the flanks.
Daniel supposed it was a common enough sight to anyone on Kostroma who paid attention to what went on around them; but it wasn’t common to him. And indeed, how many people on any planet paid attention to anything at all?
The freighters served the city; the lighters served the starships in the Floating Harbor. Smaller vessels yet, bumboats, served the crews of those starships.
Some of them were little more than dinghies. They carried fruit, liquor, and sexual partners to the personnel who had to remain on board. Not infrequently the boats returned to land with drugs and other contraband, but that had been a fact of ports throughout human history.
At this hour most bumboats clustered either along the harbor shore or were tied to concrete floats among the starships. A few of the craft burred slowly over the water, driven by tiny engines. They were probably acting as water taxis, taking officers out to their ships or bringing to shore ratings finally released on leave when they completed their duties.
Officers, even Cinnabar naval officers, allowed the bumboats to attend their ships because they couldn’t stop it. A captain who tried to isolate his crew after a voyage through sponge space would lose his personnel to desertion if not his life to mutiny.
Starship crews had to be highly trained and motivated to do their jobs. They understood the need for groundside maintenance and an anchor watch; but a wise captain, a sane captain, likewise understood the need for relaxation after touchdown. A disciplined, happy crew kept its on-board partying within bounds; but it would party.
Plasma bloomed in the Floating Harbor, casting into relief the starships tethered on the land side of the Aglaia. Daniel watched the cutter lift on its single plasma jet.
The little vessel was fitted with High Drive, but it was too small for the masts and crew necessary to enter sponge space. Lt. Mon would carry a message cell above Kostroma’s magnetosphere, then launch it toward Cinnabar.
Interstellar messages had to be carried, either by ships or by unmanned message cells. A message cell was programmed to a fixed interdimensional course. Because the Matrix through which it proceeded wasn’t fixed, not really, cells were much less trustworthy than a manned vessel.
Their advantage was their relatively small size. The Aglaia carried ten 30-foot message cells in a volume that would have been barely sufficient for a single pinnace capable of interstellar travel. A fleet would include dispatch vessels, but a single ship which needed to send a message home used a message cell.
To Daniel’s surprise another cutter rose, this time from the opposite end of the Floating Harbor. It had been launched from the Goetz von Berlichingen, the Alliance dispatch vessel.
No doubt the Alliance crew was on the same mission as Lt. Mon, to send home a message of great import. The Alliance delegation must have used shore-to-ship radio despite the risk of interception, since no courier had flown out to the starship to deliver the message.