The Spheres of Heaven tmp-2

by Charles Sheffield

  “What are our other options?”

  “None that I can see.” Korin nodded his head toward Elke Siry. “Unless our resident genius over there can suggest a different answer. She looks like she’s got her teeth into something.”

  Chan could see it, too. Elke Siry’s face glowed with excitement. She was spitting out oral commands to the terminal in front of her, while at the same time hammering out with her hands a series of requests and instructions to the ship’s computer.

  “Elke!” Dag Korin called across to her. “You have all the status reports. Do you see any alternative to allowing the ship’s external shields to be released?”

  Elke Siry raised her head. The show of teeth was not a smile but a vicious snarl. “You expect me to worry about shields, when I have this to analyze?” She waved a thin hand to take in the displays. “Don’t you realize what we have here? Do what you like with the damned shields, it’s of no interest to me — and stop interrupting my work.”

  The General glared. He said loudly to Chan, “You’d never know I was her legal guardian for five years, would you? But it’s pointless trying to talk to her when she has that look on her face.” He placed a finger on the button in front of him.

  “You were the one who insisted on bringing her,” Chan said.

  “Because she is a genius. Every army and every navy needs one — and no more than one. Most generals and admirals think it’s them, but usually it isn’t. We’ll find out what Elke’s so excited about when she’s finished her analysis.” Korin finally pressed the button. “Computer, d’you hear me? This is Dag Korin speaking.”

  AUTHORITY RECOGNIZED.

  “Good. And don’t play the idiot with me this time. Go ahead, dump the shields and take us up to the surface.”

  OBJECTION TO THE LATTER COMMAND. THE SONAR REPORTS A ROUGH SEA STATE WITH SURFACE WAVES OF TWENTY METERS AND MORE.

  “You mean after all that hassle we can’t go up?”

  WE SHOULD NOT GO ALL THE WAY TO THE SURFACE. WHILE THE ATMOSPHERIC DISTURBANCES REMAIN AT SUCH A HIGH LEVEL, THE SAFEST PLACE FOR THE SHIP IS THIRTY OR MORE METERS BELOW THE SURFACE. THE OFFSHORE SHELF SHOULD BE SAFE. THAT IS WHERE TWO OF THE OTHER STELLAR GROUP SHIPS ARE ALREADY WAITING OUT THE STORM. IT IS ASSUMED THAT YOU WILL WISH TO ESTABLISH CONTACT WITH THEM.

  “Two ships? You said three. What about the other one?”

  THE MOOD INDIGO IS PROCEEDING TOWARD A LAND MASS NINE KILOMETERS DISTANT FROM US. SUCH AN ACTION IS NOT RECOMMENDED FOR THIS SHIP FOR TWO REASONS. FIRST, THE HERO’S RETURN IS MUCH LARGER THAN THE MOOD INDIGO, AND OUR GREATER DRAFT MEANS THAT WE CANNOT GO WHERE A SMALLER SHIP IS ABLE TO PROCEED. SECOND, THE COURSE FOLLOWED BY THE MOOD INDIGO PRESENTS SUBSTANTIAL RISK. OUR BEST MODEL ESTIMATES THE PROBABILITY OF THAT SHIP’S DESTRUCTION BY NATURAL FORCES AT THE LAND-SEA INTERFACE AS NO LESS THAN 0.40. WE HAVE BEEN TRYING TO COMMUNICATE THIS CONCLUSION TO THEM, SO FAR WITHOUT SUCCESS.

  “All right, all right. I didn’t ask for a lecture.” Dag Korin raised bushy eyebrows at Chan. “Chatty devil, this one — always has been. So what do you think? Land on the off-shore shelf?”

  “If we can. But how do we maneuver to get us there? We can’t use our drive under water.”

  “We weren’t told that was a problem, so I assume know-it-all has it figured out.” Korin again pressed the button to transmit an oral command. “Computer? Go ahead, dump the goddamn shields.”

  THAT ACTION HAS ALREADY BEEN INITIATED FOLLOWING YOUR EARLIER APPROVAL.

  “Then take us to where the Stellar Group ships are sitting out the storm. Put us down near one of them — not the Angel ship, though. I can’t stand the sight of those bloody upstart artichokes.”

  THE WATER IS TOO SHALLOW FOR THIS SHIP AT THE LOCATION OF THE PIPE-RILLA VESSEL. WE CANNOT APPROACH CLOSER THAN NINE HUNDRED METERS TO THE SHORE. HOWEVER, BEING IN WATER ALSO HAS ADVANTAGES SINCE THE SHIP IS PROTECTED FROM WAVE ACTION. WHEN THE STORM SUBSIDES YOU MAY BE ABLE TO LAUNCH A TWO-PERSON AIR-BREATHING PINNACE FROM OUR UPPER LEVEL. WARNING: THE EXTENT OF POSSIBLE DAMAGE TO THE PINNACE IS UNKNOWN AT THIS TIME.

  “Fine. Go ahead and set us down in the best place you can find. I want to launch a couple of unmanned orbiters, too, as soon as possible.” The General turned back to Chan. “That computer talks too much, but in this case it has the right idea. Always keep your head down until you know the situation. Even if we had weapons and our shields in place we’d still be vulnerable. We’re like a shark on land or a tiger under water — misplaced. Staying alive is about the best we can do. I need an airborne overview.”

  Chan nodded. “If the pinnace hasn’t been too damaged we’ll have plenty of volunteers to fly it as soon as the storm lets up. Who do you think, Deb?”

  They had hardly spoken during the hours while they waited for the Link transition, but in those hours their relationship had changed. It seemed natural now to ask her for advice and assistance.

  She thought for a few moments. “Chrissie and Tarbush? They’ve been working together for years, and they’re the best observers we have.”

  “That was my thought, too. We should find them aft. All right, General?”

  “Hell, they’re your people, Dalton. Do what you need to do. I’ve got my hands full trying to make sense of this garbage. Computer, what sort of a halfassed picture do you call that ?” Korin gestured at the main screen, which showed a bizarre undersea terrain etched in black and silver.

  WHAT YOU ARE SEEING IS AN IMAGE CONSTRUCTED USING THE ULTRASOUND RETURN SIGNAL. THERE IS NO WAY TO GENERATE TRUE COLOR FROM SINGLE-FREQUENCY SOUND DATA. WOULD YOU LIKE FALSE COLOR TO BE ASSIGNED ON THE BASIS OF IMAGE LOCAL TEXTURE MEASURES?

  “How the devil do I know, until I’ve seen it? Give me another minute to look at this one.”

  As Deb and Chan left the room, the view on the big screen began to change. The ship was beginning a slow rotation, heading east and then north toward the coastal shelf. Like a great crippled whale, the Hero’s Return sought a haven on the seabed.

  Chan took a final look back. Dag Korin was scowling again, hunched over his console and arguing with the ship’s computer. Tully O’Toole stared open-mouthed at Elke Siry, in open admiration.

  And Elke?

  She alone of the people in the room — probably of all the people on the Hero’s Return — seemed happy , her attention fixed on the torrent of data flowing across the screens. Her expression remained one of blissful exaltation.

  * * *

  Chan had been exactly right in his assessment of the ship’s computer. It controlled almost every aspect of the Hero’s Return operations, and it could do almost anything — except knowingly risk the lives of humans.

  The shedding of the massive defensive shields was slow and systematic, accompanied at every step by calculations of the ship’s new density distribution, center of mass, and barycenter. The curve toward shallower water was gentle, an arc many kilometers across, imposing minimal stresses on the ship’s structure and auxiliary thrustors. Storm conditions at the surface were evaluated constantly, together with more analyses of the blue sun that now appeared occasionally through breaks in the cloud cover.

  The humans on board knew nothing about any of this, nor did they need to. Life support and life protection involves a million functions, most of them as essential, automatic and unnoticed as the flow of blood through a crew member’s arteries and veins.

  The computer was also able to obtain readings from the air-breathing pinnace fixed to the outer hull. The little craft, as feared, had been fatally damaged in shedding the defensive shields, and would no longer fly. The computer began its countdown for the other requested action. Two unmanned orbiters were to be launched from the depths. Their mission: to monitor the surface and sky of the planet and return their findings to the ship. The General had placed no restriction on the timing of the action, except to say it should be done as soon as the storm eased sufficiently. He knew that the computer was better able than any human on board to decide appropriate values for “sufficiently.”<
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  Three hours later, the Hero’s Return sprawled its cumbersome mass along the seabed, a little less than six hundred meters away from the Finder . The storm still raged, but on the seabed all was peaceful. Darkness was approaching, above and in the depths. The computer again checked the status of all onboard systems, then it switched to rest-period protocols.

  * * *

  The recreation center on the Hero’s Return had been designed on a large scale. Three hundred crew members could play there, with robot opponents if no humans were available, at everything from chess to table tennis to sumo wrestling.

  The group around Chan Dalton had tucked itself away into one dimly lit corner. Business was over. The situation on the ship had been reviewed and reviewed again. Only one thing seemed clear: weather permitting, Chrissie Winger and Tarbush Hanson — to their delight and Danny Casement’s mild irritation — would take an air-breathing pinnace up and out at first light.

  Danny’s half-hearted “I didn’t come all this way just to sit around” had been countered by Deb Bisson’s “All which way? We don’t know where we are yet — and we won’t, until someone can take a look at the star patterns.”

  “It’s only a two-person craft, Danny,” Chrissie added. “Don’t worry, there’ll be plenty of work for everyone once we get out of this steel can. We have a whole planet to explore. When we started out we didn’t know if humans could live anyplace in the Geyser Swirl.”

  “The pinnace could hold three. They often do.”

  Danny was standing up. Chrissie went across to him, looped one arm in his and the other in Tarbush Hanson’s, and led them toward the door. “Say it all again, Danny. Maybe you can talk the Tarb and me into your coming with us.”

  When they were outside the recreation hall Danny Casement stopped and stared at Chrissie with suspicion. “Why do you want to talk out here? Chan and Deb need to hear anything we agree to. Do you really mean there’s a chance I can convince you?”

  “Not in a million years. Sorry, Danny, but it will be just the Tarb and me in the pinnace.” Chrissie took his hand in hers. “You’re a big success with women, I know that. But sometimes I wonder how, because you can be as dense as Pipe-Rilla shielding.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “I know you don’t. Don’t feel too bad, though, because Tarb is no better.” Chrissie nodded her head toward the closed door of the recreation hall. “Back there, couldn’t you tell that Chan and Deb were just itching for us to leave? Couldn’t you see that things have changed between them?”

  “She wasn’t trying to kill him, if that’s what you mean. But look, we had to discuss where we are and what comes next.”

  “We finished with all that half an hour ago. Those two want to talk — but not about here and now. And not with us.”

  Danny Casement and Tarbush Hanson stared at each other. Tarbush, who had said not a word for the past three hours, slowly nodded and spoke. “I think she’s right, man. They got serious catching up to do. Twenty years of it.”

  Danny walked across the room to one of the observation ports that studded the side of the Hero’s Return . He stared out. The sea lacked the abyssal black of ocean depths, and an eye adjusted to the darkness could make out an occasional glint of phosphorescence.

  “Twenty years,” he said at last. “I guess it really has been that long. It is going to take a while.”

  Somewhere above them, far along the ship’s side, a glare of orange fire threw the sea and the seabed into sharp relief. The three at the port saw startled sea-creatures darting away and felt the plates of the Hero’s Return shudder beneath their feet. They heard a roar like a wounded sea-monster. In seconds the fiery light came from above, rapidly dimming. Within half a minute the darkness returned.

  “Rocket launch,” Danny said into a new and uneasy silence. “One of the orbitals is on the way. It must be getting calmer up on the surface.” He turned away from the port. “You’re right, Tarb, catching up is going to take a while. Let’s hope they — and we — live long enough to see it happen.”

  20: MEET THE MALACOSTRACANS

  Friday Indigo could not move a muscle.

  Not even eye muscles. He was lying on his left side on some kind of iron-hard table, low and sloping, and he could see only in one direction. Out-of-focus black objects moved jerkily in front of him against a dull gray background. He could not gauge their size, but the fuzzy outlines had the shape of the creatures who had gunned him down on the shore.

  Gunned him down; paralyzed him; but not taken away the capacity to feel pain. He hurt . His head ached, a knife blade was in his left knee, and the side that he was lying on sent jolts of agony up and down his body each time he took a breath.

  At least he could breathe. How was that possible, when no amount of effort would move arms, legs, and head a millimeter?

  He could also hear. The clicking and chattering was still going on, louder than before and with new sounds added to it. Suddenly he realized that the extra noises were coming from the translation unit attached to his own belt.

  He concentrated on that. It was gibberish, hoots and whistles and obscene gurgles. But then the occasional word started to emerge. “Water. Bubble, burble, splutter, click. Air .” A sequence of fizzing sounds, like gas escaping from a bottle. “Live — a-live — alive — alive.” And then, after a suite of musical buzzes from the unit, “Mala-costra-cans.”

  The translator was a piece of junk, just like the other one. If ever he got back to the solar system he was going to saute the liver of the crooked swine who had sold it to him.

  The unit babbled on. He had to stop listening, because suddenly his tongue and throat had a column of fire ants walking up and down on them.

  He coughed, swallowed, and almost fainted with pain. A voice from the translation unit said, “Malacostracans.” Then, “Air — breath. Wake. It live.”

  “You rotten bastards.” He could speak! But what he had said wouldn’t do him much good, even if the translator did work. “Greetings, alien strangers.” Every word was agony. Keep it short. “I — Friday Indigo — captain of the Mood Indigo — come in friendship.”

  The muscles that controlled the lenses of his eyes were coming back to life. His eyeballs were on fire, but he could focus. He counted half a dozen creatures over by the wall. There was some variation in size, but the basic body plan was constant: a broad, blue-black carapace, held close to horizontal; ten supporting legs, each one with a pouch attached to its upper end; at what he assumed was the front, two pairs of formidable front claws surrounded by mobile bristles like thin fingers; stalked eyes positioned high on the body, above a trio of fringed slits. ‘Ugly’ didn’t even begin to describe them.

  The translator hummed and said, It live. It wake.

  Were they deaf, or just plain stupid? “Did you hear me? My name is Friday Indigo, and I am the owner and captain of the space-going yacht, Mood Indigo. I come to you in friendship.”

  “ Fridayindigo. Fridayindigo. It live. S-s-speak. Us—” a pause and a fart-like groan from the translator “—us Malacostracans.”

  What was it with the “malacostracans” bit? That was the third time the machine had said the same nonsense word.

  Maybe the key to getting something sensible was to talk more, and to make the Indigoans talk back. “Hello. My name is Friday Indigo, and I have come here from another star system. I am the captain of a starship, the Mood Indigo . I am the representative of all humans, and of all other intelligent species who are members of the Stellar Group. I am a new arrival to your world, and I would like to compare your civilization with ours.”

  While Friday spoke he was taking a first hard look at his surroundings. Perhaps “civilization” was the wrong word. By any standards, the place he had been brought to was a dump.

  He was lying on the sloping table with his head slightly lower than his feet, at the upper end of a chamber that was also sloping. Maybe twenty meters long and half that across, it was lit by cylindrical wall la
mps of a sickly yellow-green. It was, in fact, not so much a room as a pool or tank. The creatures nearest to Friday stood in water only a few inches deep, but down at the far end he saw four more of them, all half-submerged and sloshing around. With its hundred-percent humidity, deadly chill, dank walls and ceiling of muddy gray, this wasn’t a place where anyone in his right mind would stay for more than a minute.

  Friday lifted his head, realizing as he did so that part of his discomfort came from the fact that he was still in his suit with his cheek resting on the hard edge of the open helmet. He worked his jaw from side to side and said, “Is the translator getting anything I’ve said across to you? It’s doing a lousy job sending stuff this way — all I’ve received so far is about five words. Can you hear me? Do you understand me?”

  The translator was certainly doing something . As Friday spoke, it produced a simultaneous string of stuttering clicks and squawks. Two of the Indigoans splashed their way closer to the table and leaned over it with waving eyestalks. Their interest seemed to be not in Friday, but in the translator unit at his waist.

  “Hell-o!” He lifted his right arm and waved feebly. “You down there. I’m up here — that’s just a machine that you’re staring at. Can you hear me? Can you understand me?”

  One of the creatures slowly turned to face him. The topmost of the three fringed slits began to move.

  “ It speak. This the it speak?”

  “If you mean, am I the one who’s talking to you and being translated by the machine there, then yes. I am the it who’s speaking.”

  “ It breath air. It live air.”

  “That’s quite right. I live in air, and I breathe air. I am” — was it worth the effort? Well, try it one more time — “I am Friday Indigo. I am a human, and so far as I know this is the first contact between your people and mine. This is a very significant meeting. Is there any chance that we could go someplace else if we’re going to keep talking? This underwater dungeon gives me the willies.”