Ocean Under the Ice

by Robert L. Forward

  She then turned to address the Prime Speaker. “And how are the youngling icerugs faring under these conditions?”

  The Prime Speaker paused, “We in the center of the city do not ever see youngling, they only appear at the outskirts of the city.” Its oval eye rotated as it looked away from the humans to address the assembled Speakers.

  “What news have any of you from your local group Pedestalers about newfound younglings? Are they suffering from the poor quality food also?”

  After lengthy discussions it was learned that no new younglings had been found out on the ice for many cycles — since shortly after the geyser had died. This news was of some surprise to the assembled Speakers — who were far distant both physically and organizationally from the icerugs out on the frontiers — but then, they were normally concerned with more important matters.

  The news didn’t surprise Deirdre. Although she didn’t yet know how icerugs reproduced, it was understandable that poorly fed icerugs would have difficulty producing viable children. She did wonder, however, why the news was of so little interest to the council. A near zero birth rate would be of great concern to any Earth government.

  It now struck the humans that the hall was unusually dimly lit, although all of the icerugs were using their lights. The walls of the building were as richly carved as those of Windward City. At the extreme temperatures they stood in, there was little change to be effected by lack of attention. But the floor, which in the other nation was kept polished to a highly reflective surface, was here uneven and dull; these icerugs apparently had lost quite a bit of their customary energy, and they simply laid their trails as they needed them, without smoothing the surface as they picked them up again. The gloom of the building was reflected in the gloom of the reports from the various Speakers. Icerugs in the inner city were, for the first time in their experience, feeling the effects of cold. Their energy was increasingly devoted to keeping from freezing.

  “My Crafts Guild members and I have no strength to manufacture goods to sell,” said a tall icerug the color of sea water on a cloudy day. “This means we have nothing to trade for flesh from the country. We are gradually diminishing and there is nothing we can do to stop it. We must do something!” There was an instant chorus of assent, which was a shock to the humans. In the comfortable debates they had witnessed before, no two icerugs ever spoke at once or raised their voices.

  “And we know what we must do, don’t we,” growled a very old-looking icerug. “It has been done before, when circumstances were desperate. And they’re desperate now. Desperate enough for war!”

  The Prime Speaker spoke more calmly. “None of us — even you — Elder Green-Orb, can recall war. What I have read of it tells me that there are tremendous losses on both sides of a war. Even if we won, many of us would die.”

  “What difference if we die in battle or of slow starvation?” asked the tall sea-colored Speaker of the Crafts Guild. “My neighbors on both sides have died already. They were older than I, but certainly not ill. Their tunnels and workshops are there for the taking, but none of us have any use for them. We are shrinking steadily, while those well-fed creatures in Windward City are growing larger every day. They must send us their surplus — they have flesh and coelashark meat to spare!”

  “If they refuse to feed us their excess, we’ll make a feast of the loathsome beasts themselves,” muttered the Elder. “I’d enjoy nothing more than twisting the eye off their Presider myself and eating it, before starting in on the rest, dead or alive.” The humans listened with growing dismay as the rest of the reports continued, with no word of improvement or hope. Each successive Speaker, indeed, ended its report with some mention of a bitter determination to wrest supplies from the wealthier city. Suddenly Green-Orb, who had been watching the humans steadily, interrupted the complaints with a question.

  “How valuable are you, travelers, to the icerugs of Windward City? Perhaps we could trade your … safety, for an ample supply of coelashark meat.” The prospect of being held hostage stunned George, and Richard tensed himself warily.

  Deirdre had not lost her detachment, however, and said coldly, “We have no value to either you nor any other icerug. Our species of being is so alien to yours, we are worthless, as you are to us.” Inside her helmet, Foxx sat stiffly erect, and reacting to the tension she felt in her mistress, her sibilant hiss curled around and through the woman’s words. The Prime Speaker intervened with calming words, and began what gave the promise of being a more traditional, lengthy icerug speech, full of vague generalities. No one glanced at the humans as they slowly moved towards the entrance, and the speech was still going on when they left. Deirdre, always sensitive to mood, felt uneasily that the speech would come to an abrupt end as soon as the humans were out of hearing; if indeed violence was to be considered, and she was very much afraid it was, the icerugs would not want these alien humans to hear anything of their plans. The snow crunching beneath their boots was the only sound as the crew walked through the dwindling city past triangular living areas only half-filled with pale icerug flesh, and between deserted buildings and tunnel entrances without life or activity visible.

  George, Deirdre, and Richard climbed back into the airlock on Dragonfly and stayed there while Arielle made the short trip across the lake to where they had put the flouwen in the water. Cinnamon’s voice spoke through their imps. “Joe has collected some preliminary reports from the flouwen through the comm link. And they’re not cheerful ones. Let me play back some of them for you.” The crew listened to the grim account.

  ^All volcanic vents quiet. No living things left but coelasharks.^ That was Little White’s steady voice.

  *But coelasharks doing fine!* enthused Little Red. *They huge!*

  Little White continued with its report. ^No hot water from vents to keep coelasharks away. They eat everything around vent. Nothing left but rocks, and big coelasharks chew them too, looking for food inside.^

  It was soon obvious that the cessation of hot water activity from the volcanic vents had exposed all the vulnerable plants and small animals to the full fury of the coelasharks, who had left nothing uneaten. The surviving coelasharks were now hungry, battle-scarred, and larger and meaner than ever.

  #Here come two coelasharks, yelling,# came a later report from Little Purple. #Talking@Sticks listen for you. I tell what they do.# The imp on Little Purple’s suit passed on the underwater sounds and Little Purple’s narration. The listening humans could then picture the events which followed, both by the flouwen’s brief words and the coelashark’s screams. The two coelasharks under observation by the flouwen were desperately hungry, and feinted at each other with their sharp-pointed rocks.

  “Great bag of guts, I’ll poke out your other eye!”

  “Not while I’ve got teeth left to tear you apart, you cringing coward!”

  Human eyes might have missed the rapid motions, but the flouwen’s sonar sensed the sudden closing with great precision.

  #One lost most of tail. Stuff coming out of hole in other one’s belly.#

  Little Purple was interrupted by a shout from Little Red. *Here comes trouble!*

  The humans heard great screams of rage and pain, and Little Purple described, with commendable detachment, several more of the veteran coelasharks who had kept this skirmish under careful scrutiny and now saw their chance. With brute savagery they ripped and tore the flesh of the two wounded battlers. In seconds, the last scrap of their bodies had been gulped down, and the number of surviving coelasharks was reduced by two.

  #Soon only one coelashark be left. Then what?#

  “You’d better come back now,” Cinnamon called to them. “We’re coming to pick you up.”

  * * *

  By the time the Dragonfly landed, the flouwen were already waiting for them, while Babble could be seen making its way back over the surface of the water, its progress hindered by the ice floes choking the slowly cooling lake.

  As Cinnamon and Deirdre helped the flouwen
out of the water and into the airlock, they asked the flouwen further questions.

  “Were there any coelashark young?” asked Deirdre.

  *No!* replied Little Red with certainty. *All eaten!*

  “Were there any signs of mating behavior?” asked Cinnamon. “Sometimes desperate circumstances trigger sexual activity.”

  ^No unusual activity,^ replied Little White.

  #Only activity of coelashark seems to be eating,# added Little Purple. #Everything. Especially each other.#

  “I cannot see the sense in it,” declared Deirdre.

  “Evolutionary sense, you mean,” agreed Cinnamon. “These creatures just get older and larger, eating each other up. No breeding, no young. It’s a dead end for them.”

  “And they don’t think of leaving,” wondered Deirdre. “Nor trying to swim away to a better spot.”

  “From what the flouwen said earlier,” remembered Cinnamon. “They have just enough intelligence to have a language, but not enough to put it to any good use. Maybe it’s time they became extinct.”

  “Seems a bit hard — not that I’m caring, of course,” Deirdre added quickly. “Only, they’re still floppin’ out on the ice and dying over at Windward City. And that seems pointless too.” They were glad to abandon the topic while they helped the clumsy flouwen into the airlock, then passed through themselves, leaving the airlock to the flouwen to use as their habitat tank.

  “That was a depressing visit,” said Richard as he removed his suit. “I wish we could do something for those people; they are really suffering.”

  “It’s not people they are, it’s icerugs, I’ll be reminding you,” said Deirdre firmly. “And how is it you know that they are suffering? Plants, which is, scientifically speaking, what they are, cannot register pain.”

  Once George was free of his helmet, he used his imp to talk to Arielle up in the cockpit.

  “Since we’re already on the north side of the inward pole, Arielle, let’s head for the north pole.”

  “North pole next stop,” replied Arielle, and the Dragonfly lifted into the air on its VTOL fans and soon the sounds coming through the hull changed from a feathery hum to a high-pitched whistle as the nuclear jet cut in.

  George came forward to talk with Arielle and Shirley. Shirley was at the science console, setting up a mapping program for the science imaging instruments on the scan platforms looking out of the bulbous side windows on the airplane.

  “From what Joe can make out from the maps taken from orbit, there is nothing between here and the north pole but ice,” said Shirley without looking up. She punched some little used icons around the side of the touch-screen. “But now that we know what the life-forms look like, I’ll insert some ‘interest operators’ into the monitor program to look for ‘interesting’ groups of pixels.”

  “Good idea,” said George. “You never know. There might be the warm water equivalent of an oasis somewhere out on this desert of snow.” Swiveling past Shirley’s chair, he came up to the flight deck and slid into the co-pilot seat. Automatically, as soon as he touched the seat, his pilot’s training made him scan the skies thoroughly all around.

  “What’s the ETA?” he asked.

  “Since less than four thousand kilometers, we be able to do it in four hours,” replied Arielle. “But I flying low and slow. We not be back this way again, so I optimize cruise for best mapping data, not best speed. Eclipse coming up soon, too. I’ll put us in circle for those ninety minutes so we don’t have gap in the map.” She touched her screen, and a copy of her flight plan appeared on George’s console. “We get to north pole in about twelve hours unless we hit weather.”

  “How does the weather look, Joe?” George asked his imp.

  “Clear for the next eighteen hours,” came the reply.

  “Then, if it’s OK with you, Arielle, I’ll hit the sack and take over when I wake up,” said George.

  “Fine,” replied Arielle with a cheerful smile. “Not tired. Most of the time above Northward City, I put Joe on autopilot and watched old movies.”

  “And ate!” snorted Shirley. “If I ate that much I wouldn’t even fit in a flouwen drysuit, much less my regular one.”

  “Speaking of flouwen suits,” said George. “If it’s going to be that long before we need the airlock again, perhaps we could let them out of their suits.” He turned to his imp. “Cinnamon? Could you please set up the habitat for the flouwen?”

  “Sure, George,” came the reply. “I’m sure they’ll appreciate the freedom.”

  “I’ll be getting some of their food to put in the airlock,” said Deirdre from inside the privacy curtains. “Richard is hogging the shower again.”

  “Good thing Joe has plenty of heat from the nuclear reactor for making hot water,” muttered George, feeling the itchy places on his skin underneath the creases of his underalls. It would feel good to squirt them hard with the shower’s fine spray.

  Deirdre went forward and opened a freezer compartment in the food locker opposite the galley. She picked out three bags. One contained long green-blue fronds, another lumps of orange-colored jelly-like flesh, and the third what looked like large dark purple slugs.

  “Fine variety,” she decided, after looking at the labels. “Slender grass for salad, filet of rogue for the main course, and creepy stinks for dessert.” She took them back and opened the inner airlock door. The strong odor of ammonia was in the air despite Joe’s efforts to keep the air in the airlock fresh.

  *I come in and help fly airplane!* announced Little Red, trying to push his way into the main cabin.

  “Later. It’s time for your swim now!” announced Cinnamon brightly, trying to block the way of the large drysuited alien.

  “A swim and lunch!” added Deirdre, adding her pushes to that of Cinnamon, while holding up the food bags. Distracted by the sight of the food, Little Red allowed himself to be pushed back into the airlock, and the two women shut the door and locked it.

  “Start habitat cycle, Joe,” said Cinnamon through her imp.

  Joe, having used its Christmas Branch earlier to make the necessary changes in its plumbing and valve connections, emptied the air out of the airlock, being careful to save the oxygen and ammonia, while dumping the nitrogen and carbon dioxide outside. Simultaneously, it pumped in icy ammonia water from the consumables tanks that normally held air for use by the crew on airless planets. The minute the water started to flow, the flouwen unzipped their drysuits, flowed out of them onto the floor, and began to play in the jet, while the suit imps hauled the drysuits up into nets hanging from the ceiling. Joe also signaled the flouwen that the drain connection had been opened, and the flouwen took advantage of the opportunity to empty their waste vacuoles before starting their meal.

  *Creepy@Stink too hard!* complained Little Red.

  ^You must be more patient, subset of Roaring*Hot*Vermillion,^ chastised Little White. ^Let it thaw first. Here, have some Thin@Grass to eat while you wait.^

  #K-k-k-k-eeeeeee-k-k-k,# said Little Purple, ignoring the food for now, while enjoying the cooling freshness of the jet.

  Their antics were watched by Cinnamon and Deirdre peeking through the airlock window.

  “Little Purple likes showers as much as Richard does,” said Deirdre. She heard the sound of the bathroom door opening, and moved quickly through the privacy curtain and into the bathroom, catching a glimpse of a hairy leg with four toes just disappearing into a commodious upper bunk as she did so. The bunks on Dragonfly were big enough to sit up and get dressed in, which made life easier for all concerned, since the main corridor between the engineering section in the back and the science section near the front went right through the crew quarters and there was lots of traffic back and forth through the privacy curtains.

  As the Dragonfly flew north, Barnard rose early and traveled through the sky to Gargantua, which had moved from its spot overhead toward the southern horizon. Barnard then disappeared behind Gargantua in its normal noonday eclipse. When the eclipse dark
ness arrived, Arielle put the plane into a wide circular holding pattern, and let Joe hold it there while she got a quick snack and took a one-hour nap. Shirley activated the infrared imagers in the two science scan platforms that looked out the bulbous “eye” ports on either side of the nose, but found no hot spots in the darkness that might indicate an oasis in the lifeless ice below.

  After the eclipse, Arielle resumed their northward course, and the daylight, instead of ending three hours after the eclipse, stretched on and on, as Barnard neared the horizon, but never set. George awoke and took over as they approached the north pole. As he sat down and automatically scanned the sky, he had to squint his eyes slightly against the red sun hanging just a few degrees above the horizon.

  “Here we are in the land of the midnight sun,” he said. “The scenery is about as barren and uninteresting as the scenery at the Earth’s north pole.”

  “Or the north pole of Ganymede,” remarked Richard. “But you’re looking at it with the wrong eyes. To me it’s very interesting. Below that crust is millions of years of climatic history, compressed into layers of ice containing trapped air bubbles and dust particles and various isotopes that can tell us what has happened to this moon in the distant past. I want a sample…” his finger pointed at the touch-screen. “…from right here.”

  “The north pole,” replied George, looking at the green blob on his navigation display. “Of course. We should be there in half an hour.” He spoke to his imp, “Deirdre?”

  “Deirdre is now on sleep shift,” replied Joe. “Shall I connect you with Cinnamon?”

  “Please,” replied George, and when the connection had been made, he added. “Richard will be needing to use the airlock in about an hour. Please get the flouwen back into their drysuits and the airlock emptied out.”

  “Right,” came Cinnamon’s reply back through his imp. “But Little Red will be wanting to help you fly the airplane.”

  “That’s OK,” replied George. “I’ll put him in the co-pilot seat and let him operate the display — but I’ll deactivate the controls — that’ll keep him occupied and out of the way.”