The Spheres of Heaven tmp-2

by Charles Sheffield

  Once more it was too dark to see anything. Bony and Liddy stayed where they were, hoping that Vow-of-Silence was doing the same. Bony had a new worry. Suppose that the storm continued into the night and true darkness came to Limbo? He and Liddy would run out of air in eight more hours. He didn’t know how it would be for the Pipe-Rilla, but long before morning the humans had to be back on board a ship.

  Another lightning bolt came, hardly brighter than the last one. But this time a curious afterglow replaced the return of stygian darkness. It continued and brightened, and by its light Bony could once more make out the figures of the Pipe-Rilla and the Angel. He was about to head toward them when he heard Liddy gasp, “Bony! Look there. Up to the right.”

  His attention had been on the way ahead. Now he tilted his head back and followed Liddy’s pointing arm. At once he saw the source of the new light.

  It came not from the syncopated stutter of lightning bolts, nor from the faded gleam of Limbo’s sun. The source of illumination was a ship. All lights blazing, it surged over them, about a hundred meters to their right. It was below the surface of the sea, and it must be gigantic because the forward surge of its great blunt hull produced a bow wave powerful enough to throw Bony helplessly backward and turn him upside down.

  But it was not the pressure wave that made Bony gasp, nor was it fear of a war vessel alien and dangerous. He blinked in disbelief because he thought he knew that outline. That was no dinky space yacht, like the Mood Indigo , nor an alien flying machine like the one that he and Liddy had spotted on their trip ashore. Unless his eyes were deceiving him, that was a Class Five cruiser — a human design, symbol of former human military might, powerful and close to impregnable — driving its three-hundred-meter, eighty-plus-thousand-ton, thousand-crew bulk through the alien seas of Limbo.

  And then, almost before Bony could bring himself back to an upright position, the monstrous ship was cruising on and vanishing into the fog of silt. The vessel was on a descending path. If it continued unchecked, ten more minutes would bring it to a halt on the seabed. A cruiser would surely survive that impact, and the little group on the seabed would be safer there than anywhere on Limbo.

  Unless …

  Bony could imagine a worse possibility. Suppose that the new ship’s course was to the south or west? The coastal shelf ended a few kilometers in that direction. The cruiser might then be destined for a different fate: a descent into an unknown and unplumbed ocean. At sufficient depth and pressure, even the cruiser’s solid hull would collapse like an imploding soap bubble.

  18: FRIDAY GOES IT ALONE

  Friday Indigo had said not a word to anyone, but he knew exactly what he must do. It had been obvious as soon as he learned that other Stellar Group members were present on Limbo.

  The Tinkers and Pipe-Rillas, damn their alien guts, had met the Limbics before he had. They had ruined his chances for first contact with a new intelligent species.

  But you didn’t have to be a genius to draw a few other conclusions. First, no matter what that moron Rombelle might think, the Limbics were in a primitive, pre-technology stage of development. Second, the bubble-brain Limbics were marine creatures, who did not and could not occupy the land area of their planet. Third, on Rombelle and Liddy Morse’s visit to the surface they had seen a working flying machine. Fourth, the Stellar Group members were stuck at the bottom of the sea. They had not explored the land.

  Put it all together, and the answer stared you in the face: another intelligent species existed on Limbo. Its members lived not in the sea, but on dry land. They possessed technology, advanced enough to build an aircraft, and the plane’s home base must be reasonably close since Rombelle had also reported seeing the shadow pass above him on his first excursion from the Mood Indigo . Finally, and most important, no one from the Stellar Group had been in touch with the land-dwellers . First contact with them would be a truly historic event — not a useless contact with some shapeless underwater objects who spoke in gobbledygook and were made of glop.

  Hey, the presence of another Stellar Group ship on Limbo might even be a blessing. It meant that Friday could go off and look for the land-dwellers alone, without having to drag along the dead weight of Bony Rombelle and Liddy Morse. For the past few days he had regretted bringing them with him at all. Sure, the sex with Liddy was nice, but hardly worth the hassle of dealing with incompetents.

  The Mood Indigo lifted easily from the seabed as Friday applied power to the auxiliary thrustors. Flying the ship underwater proved to be no harder than doing so in space — easier, in a way, because water resistance damped any slight over- or under-thrust. Friday raised the ship ten meters, then spent a few minutes trimming the balance and experimenting with lateral and vertical motion. As soon as he had the hang of it he would approach the shore. He was delighted to find that he could move the ship in any direction, at the same time rising or falling in the water exactly as he chose.

  At first he headed due north, so that anyone watching would assume he was taking the ship back to its original position on the seabed. Only when he was kilometers away from the stranded Pipe-Rilla ship and could not see it using any of his instruments did he curve his course east, in the direction of the land.

  He maintained a leisurely pace, not because he was worried or cautious but because he was savoring the moment. Let’s face it, you could win a hundred space-sailing regattas from the Vulcan Nexus to the Dry Tortugas, and what did it get you? A shelf of rinky-dink trophies and your name in tiny print in some never-looked-at record book. You could start out in life with all the money you were ever likely to need, triple or quadruple it, and still find twenty Indigo family members with more. So if you were Friday Indigo, the name of the game had to be fame, not wealth. A first contact like this would put your name up there with Timbers Rattigan, who came back with news of the Tinker civilization, or Marianna Slung, who discovered the Angels of Sellora. You would be somebody little kids were told about in reverent tones: Friday Indigo, first human to encounter the — the — the what?

  He needed a good name. The bubble-brains could be the “Limbics.” That was a lousy name and anyway Bony Rombelle had chosen it. What to call the land-dwellers?

  That was a no-brainer. Friday smiled. He was on his way for first contact with the Indigoans .

  * * *

  The Mood Indigo drifted steadily east, twenty meters below the surface. The ship’s sonar told Friday that the sea depth beneath him was slowly decreasing, just as he had expected. It was his intention to move the ship as close to the shore as possible. With luck that would lift the upper decks clear of the surface, allowing him to use the top airlock and wade ashore without needing a suit.

  The first suggestion that things might not continue according to plan came from the sea-bottom sensors. Friday had set the auxiliary drive to a constant level of thrust, which ought to guarantee a steady rise or fall through the water. But the instruments in the control cabin insisted that the depth of water beneath the ship was changing in a cyclic way, increasing steadily by up to ten meters and then, half a minute later, decreasing by the same amount. Also — Friday ended his pleasant musing and became fully alert — the inertial positioning system insisted that although he had set the thrustors to take him due east, the direction of the Mood Indigo was in fact more like northeast.

  Damn the instruments. Were they feeding him garbage? Had Rombelle somehow screwed them up, in his endless tinkering?

  There was one easy way to find out, without depending on instruments: rise all the way to the surface, and take a look using the imaging sensors.

  Friday fed more power to the thrustors. The result was immediate and disturbing. As the ship lifted higher it began to roll and pitch, rocking Friday from side to side at the controls. He swore, locked in the autopilot — God knows how well an autopilot developed for use in space would perform at sea — and called for a wraparound display from the bow imaging sensor.

  Confusion. The seabed depth sonar was all over
the place, and in any case there was no way to tell from its readings if the upper end of the Mood Indigo was above or below the surface. But the display ought to show one or the other, a view of air or a view of water. It provided neither. Friday saw a crazy patchwork pattern of bubbles and foam and dark streaks, plus an occasional glimpse of clouded sky. At the same moment he heard a sound. Something above his head was thumping on the highest part of the hull, loudly, imperatively, sending violent shivers through the whole ship.

  The Mood Indigo was close to the surface — the bow must even be above it. That idea was confirmed when a flash of light filled the ship’s whole interior and the hull rang like a giant gong.

  Goddamit, they’d been struck by lightning! The top of the ship was a natural target, projecting above the surface. This was not the smooth seas and calm water that he had expected, but the broken chaos of a howling storm. Those streaks and that foam were breaking waves, and the regular booming came from their ferocious impact on the ship.

  Well, the hell with this. He’d had enough, and fortunately there was an easy solution. What went up would go down. Deep water was calm.

  Friday cut the drive completely. At once the sky view dwindled in the imaging sensors and the ship’s roll became less pronounced. They were sinking. Another half-minute, and he and the Mood Indigo would enjoy the haven of the seabed.

  Within seconds he learned that this plan would not work, either. The downward movement came to a jarring end. The bottom of the ship had hit the seabed. They had been approaching the shore for the past few minutes, and now they were in water too shallow for total submergence.

  Friday cursed and threw everything into reverse — an act warned against in all the manuals. The whole vessel shuddered as the lateral thrustors switched polarity, urging the ship back the way it had come. For a moment it worked. The inertial positioning system showed them moving to open water; then a huge wave smashed into the exposed upper hull. The ship started to tilt. And tilt.

  It was going over — all the way over. Friday managed one last desperate act, turning off the thrustors before he clutched at the arms of his seat. The ship pitched forward, farther and farther. He was not wearing a restraining harness. He lost his grip and fell toward what had been the front wall of the cabin.

  It was a two-meter drop, but in the low gravity of Limbo he had plenty of time to brace himself before he hit the panelled wall. He looked straight up. The move from vertical to horizontal should have helped, because the Mood Indigo was longer than it was wide. And it had. The ports showed only water. The ship was totally submerged.

  But not submerged enough. As Friday watched, the topmost port showed a white spume of foam, then a glimpse of dark cloudy sky. At the wave’s trough, the water level dropped far enough to expose the upper part of the hull. A few seconds later, a new rising wave lifted and pushed. Friday heard a groaning, scraping sound, and the ship jerked a couple of meters forward.

  He could guess what came next. The Mood Indigo would be driven inch by inch toward the rocky shore, more and more exposed, hit harder and harder by the waves. The hull had not been designed for hammer blows. It could not stand much more of this kind of beating. Already he heard the groan of stressed bulkheads and tortured joints, and a grinding moan as something on the outside hull — communications antennas? manipulator arms? — was torn free.

  Put on his suit, and struggle to an airlock? Even if he succeeded, he would be worse off than inside the ship. The waves outside were monsters, they would lift him like flotsam and smash his body onto the bare rocks. He dare not leave the ship.

  Was that it, then? Travel hundreds of lightyears, and die on a storm-swept shore like some peasant fisherman?

  Never. Not Friday Indigo. He held on tight as the attack of another giant wave made the ship’s structure groan in protest.

  First, a suit. The hull might be breached at any moment, and even though a suit could not protect him from the rocks it could keep him from drowning.

  But his suit, damn it, was on the next level up. Friday started to crawl along the curve of the wall toward the ship’s bow. He had to pause and grab and hold tight as each new wave hit. Twice he slid back a few feet. But he kept trying, and he made progress. When he finally had the suit in his hands, putting it on was far from easy. He had to wait for a quiet moment, release his handholds, and slide the suit on as far as possible in the few seconds before he was again grabbing and clutching and swearing. The suit did its best to help, but it was slow, focused work. Almost a quarter of an hour passed before he was waiting for the next shock to subside so that he could set the helmet in position.

  He waited, and became aware of something else. He had been so intent on what he was doing that the strength of the blows on the outside of the ship had not been on his mind. Now he thought — or imagined — that the last few waves had hit less hard. Could it be that the storm had passed its peak?

  The imaging sensors were useless, a blur of foam and mist. Friday clamped his helmet into position and began to crawl up the sloping wall. His target was one of the ports, normally on the side of the hull but now, with the ship turned horizontal, it stood right above his head.

  This climb was even harder. When he reached the halfway point the hull curved over his head, so that soon he was relying on his hands only while his feet swung free. The impact of the waves still tried to jar him loose from his handholds, but now the low gravity of Limbo helped. He was able to hold on and keep climbing, until finally his helmet was level with the port and he could peer out.

  His view was toward the rear of the ship and — for the moment — above the surface. The sky was dark, riven by clouds, but in a few places he saw far-off flickers of lightning. Their random flashes illuminated a series of gigantic white-topped wave crests, rolling irresistibly in toward him. They seemed bigger than ever. The storm was in no way past its peak. So why did he feel that the sledgehammer blows on the ship were becoming less destructive?

  He held on tight, staring hard at the nearest wave. It was changing shape as it approached. Its smooth profile was breaking, falling in on itself as he watched. The wave was certainly going to reach the Mood Indigo , and it might push the stranded vessel farther forward. But some of the breaker’s forward momentum was lost with every meter that it travelled.

  Why? How?

  Friday ducked his head and gritted his teeth until the wave had hit and passed, then turned to stare to the left and to the right. He saw water, as expected — but beyond the water was land. A gray shoreline, and farther away black, rocky hills jutted up on either side.

  Thatwas the reason why the storm felt weaker. The Mood Indigo had been incredibly lucky. Instead of being thrown onto the stony shore, to be hammered until it broke apart, the ship had been driven by the storm into some kind of fjord or drowned river valley whose sides broke the force of the waves and protected anything within its harbor. Every meter that an extra-large wave forced the Mood Indigo only served to protect the vessel better from the next one.

  The danger now was that the ship was not in a true fjord, but in a narrow strait between two islands. If that were the case, relief from the storm might be only temporary.

  Friday turned to find out what lay ahead. A passing wave threw up a screen of foam and it was a few moments before he had a clear view. He peered, stared, and whooped aloud in triumph.

  “You did it, Friday-man, you incredible genius son of a bitch. You did it!”

  A few hundred meters in front of the ship the river valley narrowed farther. Waves still broke on its shores, but they gradually diminished to a rolling surf no more than a meter high. Friday saw through blown spray a line of columns amid the breakers, together with the hint of a black jetty. Beyond, clear and stark in the odd half-light of the storm, stood a pair of jet-black buildings. They were low-built and ugly, hugging the shore like a pair of beached whales, but to Friday’s eyes they and the whole scene were beautiful. Because this was undoubtedly the work of intelligent beings —
beings who could in no way be the bubble-brained bottom-feeding nonsense-gurgling morons that Bony Rombelle had named as Limbics.

  Friday Indigo feasted his eyes and murmured, “First contact, here I come!”

  * * *

  He couldn’t recall anything in his life as frustrating as the next four hours.

  The waves had moved the Mood Indigo as far as they could, until the ship was firmly grounded halfway along the river valley. The ship was now in no danger, but unfortunately it had not been moved quite far enough. Friday had no way to leave it and survive, as long as the waves remained big enough to lift a suited man and smash him on the rocks.

  He fidgeted and fretted, doing all the possibly useful and time-consuming things that he could think of. The airlock, if and when he finally got to use it, was positioned above the waterline. He made sure that it was ready to use as soon as the waves subsided enough. Supplies, he might need supplies. He packed enough concentrated food for a week into a small backpack. Water was available, there was even too much of it, but an empty bottle might come in handy. Yes, and he mustn’t forget a translation unit — one that he hoped would perform a sight better than the piece of junk he had tried on the witless bubble-brains.

  It was slow work, moving about in a ship that had been turned through ninety degrees so that walls became floor and floor became a wall. The occasional super-wave thumped and pummeled hard enough to be worrying. Even so, he had done everything that could be done in less than an hour. Then it was a long, infuriating wait, with another worry: Night was approaching on Limbo. He could certainly spend thirteen hours of darkness on board the Mood Indigo , but he just as certainly didn’t want to. He had not been able to coax an enhanced picture out of the battered imaging equipment — that sort of thing was one of the fat oaf Rombelle’s few talents — but by staring out of a port until his eyes ached he believed that he could make out minute black dots moving near the two buildings on the shore. Sizes at such a distance were deceptive, but he guessed at something maybe a meter high. Midgets, if they were built like people. But the dots that he saw seemed much longer than they were tall.