All the other members of the reception committee had now approached and were introduced one by one. Brant, after the briefest of courtesies, headed straight for the aircraft and began to examine it from end to end.

Loren followed him; he recognized a fellow engineer when he saw one and would be able to learn a good deal from the Thalassan's reactions. He guessed, correctly, what Brant's first question would be about. Even so, he was taken off balance.

'What's the propulsion system? Those jet orifices are ridiculously small - if that's what they are.'

It was a very shrewd observation; these people were not the technological savages they had seemed at first sight. But it would never do to show that he was impressed. Better to counterattack and let him have it right between the eyes.

'It's a derated quantum ramjet, adapted for atmospheric flight by using air as a working fluid. Taps the Planck fluctuations - you know, ten to the minus thirty-three centimetres. So of course it has infinite range, in air or in space.' Loren felt rather pleased with that 'of course'.

Once again he had to give Brant credit; the Lassan barely blinked and even managed to say, 'Very interesting,' as if he really meant it.

'Can I go inside?'

Loren hesitated. It might seem discourteous to refuse, and after all, they were anxious to make friends as quickly as possible. Perhaps more important, this would show who really had the mastery here.

'Of course,' he answered. 'But be careful not to touch anything.' Brant was much too interested to notice the absence of 'please'.

Loren led the way into the spaceplane's tiny airlock. There was just enough room for the two of them, and it required complicated gymnastics to seal Brant into the spare bubble suit.

'I hope these won't be necessary for long,' Loren explained, 'but we have to wear them until the microbiology checks are complete. Close your eyes until we've been through the sterilization cycle.'

Brant was aware of a faint violet glow, and there was a brief hissing of gas. Then the inner door opened, and they walked into the control cabin.

As they sat down side by side, the tough, yet scarcely visible films around them barely hindered their movements. Yet it separated them as effectively as if they were on different worlds - which, in many senses, they still were.

Brant was a quick learner, Loren had to admit. Give him a few hours and he could handle this machine - even though he would never be able to grasp the underlying theory. For that matter, legend had it that only a handful of men had ever really comprehended the geodynamics of superspace - and they were now centuries dead.

They quickly became so engrossed in technical discussions that they almost forgot the outside world. Suddenly, a slightly worried voice remarked from the general direction of the control panel, 'Loren? Ship calling. What's happening? We've not heard from you for half an hour.'

Loren reached lazily for a switch.

'Since you're monitoring us on six video and five audio channels, that's a slight exaggeration.' He hoped that Brant had got the message: We're in full charge of the situation, and we're not taking anything for granted. 'Over to Moses - he's doing all the talking as usual.'

Through the curved windows, they could see that Kaldor and the mayor were still in earnest discussion, with Councillor Simmons joining in from time to time. Loren threw a switch, and their amplified voices suddenly filled the cabin, more loudly than if they had been standing beside them.

' - our hospitality. But you realize, of course, that this is an extraordinarily small world, as far as land surface is concerned. How many people did you say were aboard your ship?'

'I don't think I mentioned a figure, Madame Mayor. In any event, only a very few of us will ever come down to Thalassa, beautiful though it is. I fully understand your - ah - concern, but there's no need to feel the slightest apprehension. In a year or two, if all goes well, we'll be on our way again.

'At the same time, this isn't a social call - after all, we never expected to meet anyone here! But a starship doesn't delta-vee through half the velocity of light except for very good reasons. You have something that we need, and we have something to give you.'

'What, may I ask?'

'From us, if you will accept it, the final centuries of human art and science. But I should warn you - consider what such a gift may do to your own culture. It might not be wise to accept everything we can offer.'

'I appreciate your honesty - and your understanding. You must have treasures beyond price. What can we possibly offer in exchange?'

Kaldor gave his resonant laugh.

'Luckily, that's no problem. You wouldn't even notice, if we took it without asking.

'All we want from Thalassa is a hundred thousand tons of water. Or, to be more specific, ice.'

 

11 Delegation

The President of Thalassa had been in office for only two months and was still unreconciled to his misfortune. But there was nothing he could do about it, except to make the best of a bad job for the three years it would last. Certainly it was no use demanding a recount; the selection program, which involved the generation and interleaving of thousand-digit random numbers, was the nearest thing to pure chance that human ingenuity could devise.

There were exactly five ways to avoid the danger of being dragged into the Presidential Palace (twenty rooms, one large enough to hold almost a hundred guests). You could be under thirty or over seventy; you could be incurably ill; you could be mentally defective; or you could have committed a grave crime. The only option really open to President Edgar Farradine was the last, and he had given it serious thought.

Yet he had to admit that, despite the personal inconvenience it had caused him, this was probably the best form of government that mankind had ever devised. The mother planet had taken some ten thousand years to perfect it, by trial and often hideous error.

As soon as the entire adult population had been educated to the limits of its intellectual ability (and sometimes, alas, beyond) genuine democracy became possible. The final step required the development of instantaneous personal communications, linked with central computers. According to the historians, the first true democracy on Earth was established in the (Terran) year 2011, in a country called New Zealand.

Thereafter, selecting a head of state was relatively unimportant. Once it was universally accepted that anyone who deliberately aimed at the job should automatically be disqualified, almost any system would serve equally well, and a lottery was the simplest procedure.

'Mr. President,' the secretary to the cabinet said, 'the visitors are waiting in the library.'

'Thank you, Lisa. And without their bubble suits?'

'Yes - all the medical people agree that it's perfectly safe. But I'd better warn you, sir. They - ah - smell a little odd.'

'Krakan! In what way?'

The secretary smiled.

'Oh, it's not unpleasant - at least, I don't think so. It must be something to do with their food; after a thousand years, our biochemistries may have diverged. "Aromatic" is probably the best word to describe it.'

The president was not quite sure what that meant and was debating whether to ask when a disturbing thought occurred to him.

'And how,' he said, 'do you suppose we smell to them?

To his relief, his five guests showed no obvious signs of olfactory distress when they were introduced, one at a time. But Secretary Elisabeth Ishihara was certainly wise to have warned him; now he knew exactly what the word 'aromatic' implied. She was also correct in saying that it was not unpleasant; indeed, he was reminded of the spices his wife used when it was her turn to do the cooking in the palace.

As he sat down at the curve of the horseshoe-shaped conference table, the President of Thalassa found himself musing wryly about Chance and Fate - subjects that had never much concerned him in the past. But Chance, in its purest form, had put him in his present position. Now it - or its sibling, Fate - had struck again. How odd that he, an unambitious manufacturer of sporting equipment, had been chosen to preside at this historic meeting! Still, somebody had to do it; and he had to admit that he was beginning to enjoy himself. At the very least, no one could stop him from making his speech of welcome ...

... It was, in fact, quite a good speech, though perhaps a little longer than necessary even for such an occasion as this. Towards the end he became aware that his listeners' politely attentive expressions were becoming a trifle glazed, so he cut out some of the productivity statistics and the whole section about the new power grid on South Island. When he sat down, he felt confident that he had painted a picture of a vigorous, progressive society with a high level of technical skills. Any superficial impressions to the contrary notwithstanding, Thalassa was neither backward nor decadent, and still sustained the finest traditions of its great ancestors. Et cetera.

'Thank you very much, Mr. President,' Captain Bey said in the appreciative pause that followed. 'It was indeed a welcome surprise when we discovered that Thalassa was not only inhabited, but flourishing. It will make our stay here all the more pleasant, and we hope to leave again with nothing but goodwill on both sides.'

'Pardon me for being so blunt - it may even seem rude to raise the question just as soon as guests arrive - but how long do you expect to be here? We'd like to know as soon as possible, so that we can make any necessary arrangements.'

'I quite understand, Mr. President. We can't be specific at this stage, because it depends partly on the amount of assistance you can give us. My guess is at least one of your years - more probably two.'

Edgar Farradine, like most Lassans, was not good at concealing his emotions, and Captain Bey was alarmed by the sudden gleeful - one might even say crafty - expression that spread across the chief executive's countenance.

'I hope, Your Excellency, that won't create any problems?' he asked anxiously.

'On the contrary,' the president said, practically rubbing his hands. 'You may not have heard, but our 200th Olympic Games are due in two years.' He coughed modestly. 'I got a bronze in the 1000 metres when I was a young man, so they've put me in charge of the arrangements. We could do with some competition from outside.'

'Mr. President,' the secretary to the cabinet said, 'I'm not sure that the rules - '

'Which I make,' continued the president firmly. 'Captain, please consider this an invitation. Or a challenge, if you prefer.'

The commander of the starship Magellan was a man accustomed to making swift decisions, but for once he was taken completely aback. Before he could think of a suitable reply, his chief medical officer stepped into the breach.

'That's extremely kind of you, Mr. President,' Surgeon-Commander Mary Newton said. 'But as a medperson, may I point out that all of us are over thirty, we're completely out of training - and Thalassa's gravity is six per cent stronger than Earth's, which would put us at a severe disadvantage. So unless your Olympics includes chess or card games..’

The president looked disappointed, but quickly recovered.

'Oh, well - at least, Captain Bey, I'd like you to present some of the prizes.'

'I'd be delighted,' the slightly dazed commander said. He felt that the meeting was getting out of hand and determined to return to the agenda.

'May I explain what we hope to do here, Mr. President?'

'Of course,' was the somewhat uninterested reply. His Excellency's thoughts still seemed elsewhere. Perhaps he was still reliving the triumphs of his youth. Then, with an obvious effort, he focused his attention upon the present. 'We were flattered, but rather puzzled, by your visit. There seems very little that our world can offer you. I'm told there was some talk of ice; surely that was a joke.'

'No, Mr. President - we're absolutely serious. That's all we need of Thalassa, though now we've sampled some of your food products - I'm thinking especially of the cheese and wine we had at lunch - we may increase our demands considerably. But ice is the essential; let me explain. First image, please.'

The starship Magellan, two metres long, floated in front of the president. It looked so real that he wanted to reach out and touch it, and would certainly have done so had there been no spectators to observe such naive behaviour.

'You'll see that the ship is roughly cylindrical - length four kilometres, diameter one. Because our propulsion system taps the energies of space itself, there's no theoretical limit to speed, up to the velocity of light. But in practice, we run into trouble at about a fifth of that speed, owing to interstellar dust and gas. Tenuous though that is, an object moving through it at sixty thousand kilometres a second or more hits a surprising amount of material - and at that velocity even a single hydrogen atom can do appreciable damage.

'So Magellan, just like the first primitive spaceships, carries an ablation shield ahead of it. Almost any material would do, as long as we use enough of it. And at the near-zero temperature between the stars, it's hard to find anything better than ice. Cheap, easily worked, and surprisingly strong! This blunt cone is what our little iceberg looked like when we left the solar system, two hundred years ago. And this is what it's like now.'

The image flickered, then reappeared. The ship was unchanged, but the cone floating ahead of it had shrunk to a thin disc.

'That's the result of drilling a hole fifty light-years long, through this rather dusty sector of the galaxy. I'm pleased to say the rate of ablation is within five per cent of estimate, so we were never in any danger - though of course there was always the remote possibility that we might hit something really big. No shield could protect us against that - whether it was made of ice, or the best armour-plate steel.

'We're still good for another ten light-years, but that's not enough. Our final destination is the planet Sagan 2 - seventy-five lights to go.

'So now you understand, Mr. President, why we stopped at Thalassa. We would like to borrow - well, beg, since we can hardly promise to return it - a hundred or so thousand tons of water from you. We must build another iceberg, up there in orbit, to sweep the path ahead of us when we go on to the stars.'

'How can we possibly help you to do that? Technically, you must be centuries ahead of us.'

'I doubt it - except for the quantum drive. Perhaps Deputy Captain Malina can outline our plans - subject to your approval, of course.'

'Please go ahead.'

'First we have to locate a site for the freezing plant. There are many possibilities - it could be on any isolated stretch of coastline. It will cause absolutely no ecological disturbance, but if you wish, we'll put it on East Island - and hope that Krakan won't blow before we've finished!

'The plant design is virtually complete, needing only minor modifications to match whatever site we finally choose. Most of the main components can go into production right away. They're all very straightforward - pumps, refrigerating systems, heat exchangers, cranes - good old-fashioned Second Millennium technology!

'If everything goes smoothly, we should have our first ice in ninety days. We plan to make standard-sized blocks, each weighing six hundred tons - flat, hexagonal plates - someone's christened them snowflakes, and the name seems to have stuck.

'When production's started, we'll lift one snowflake every day. They'll be assembled in orbit and keyed together to build up the shield. From first lift to final structural test should take two hundred and fifty days. Then we'll be ready to leave.'

When the deputy captain had finished, President Farradine sat in silence for a moment, a faraway look in his eye. Then he said, almost reverently. 'Ice - I've never seen any, except at the bottom of a drink ...'

* * *

As he shook hands with the departing visitors, President Farradine became aware of something strange. Their aromatic odour was now barely perceptible.

Had he grown accustomed to it already - or was he losing his sense of smell?

Although both answers were correct, around midnight he would have accepted only the second. He woke up with his eyes watering, and his nose so clogged that it was difficult to breathe.

'What's the matter, dear?' Mrs President said anxiously.

'Call the - atischoo! - doctor,' the chief executive answered. 'Ours – and the one up in the ship. I don't believe there's a damn thing they can do, but I want to give them - atischoo - a piece of my mind. And I hope you haven't caught it as well.'

The president's lady started to reassure him, but was interrupted by a sneeze.

They both sat up in bed and looked at each other unhappily.

'I believe it took seven days to get over it,' sniffed the president. 'But perhaps medical science has advanced in the last few centuries.'

His hope was fulfilled, though barely. By heroic efforts, and with no loss of life, the epidemic was stamped out - in six miserable days.

It was not an auspicious beginning for the first contact between star-sundered cousins in almost a thousand years.

 

12 Heritage

We've been here two weeks, Evelyn - though it doesn't seem like it as that's only eleven of Thalassa's days. Sooner or later we'll have to abandon the old calendar, but my heart will always beat to the ancient rhythms of Earth.

It's been a busy time, and on the whole a pleasant one. The only real problem was medical; despite all precautions, we broke quarantine too soon, and about twenty per cent of the Lassans caught some kind of virus. To make us feel even guiltier, none of ms developed any symptoms whatsoever. Luckily no one died, though I'm afraid we can't give the local doctors too much credit for that. Medical science is definitely backward here; they've grown to rely on automated systems so much that they can't handle anything out of the ordinary.

But we've been forgiven; the Lassans are very good-natured, easygoing people. They have been incredibly lucky - perhaps too lucky! - with their planet; it makes the contrast with Sagan 2 even bleaker.

Their only real handicap is lack of land, and they've been wise enough to hold the population well below the sustainable maximum. If they're ever tempted to exceed it, they have the records of Earth's city-slums as a terrible warning.

Because they're such beautiful and charming people, it's a great temptation to help them instead of letting them develop their own culture in their own way. In a sense, they're our children - and all parents find it hard to accept that, sooner or later, they must cease to interfere.

To some extent, of course, we can't help interfering; our very presence does that. We're unexpected - though luckily not unwelcome - guests on their planet. And they can never forget that Magellan is orbiting just above the atmosphere, the last emissary from the world of their own ancestors.

I've revisited First Landing – their birthplace - and gone on the tour that every Lassan makes at least once in his life. It's a combination of museum and shrine, the only place on the whole planet to which the word 'sacred' is remotely applicable. Nothing has changed in seven hundred years. The seedship, though it is now an empty husk, looks as if it has only just landed. All around it are the silent machines - the excavators and constructors and chemical processing plants with their robot attendants. And, of course, the nurseries and schools of Generation One.

There are almost no records of those first decades - perhaps deliberately. Despite all the skills and precautions of the planners, there must have been biological accidents, ruthlessly eliminated by the overriding program. And the time when those who had no organic parents gave way to those who did, must have been full of psychological traumas.

But the tragedy and sadness of the Genesis Decades is now centuries in the past. Like the graves of all pioneers, it has been forgotten by the builders of the new society.

I would be happy to spend the rest of my life here; there's material on Thalassa for a whole army of anthropologists and psychologists and social scientists. Above all, how I wish I could meet some of my long-dead colleagues and let them know how many of our endless arguments have been finally resolved!

It is possible to build a rational and humane culture completely free from the threat of supernatural restraints. Though in principle I don't approve of censorship, it seems that those who prepared the archives for the Thalassan colony succeeded in an almost-impossible task. They purged the history and literature of ten thousand years, and the result has justified their efforts. We must be very cautious before replacing anything that was lost -however beautiful, however moving a work of art.

The Thalassans were never poisoned by the decay products of dead religions, and in seven hundred years no prophet has arisen here to preach a new faith. The very word 'God' has almost vanished from their language, and they're quite surprised - or amused - when we happen to use it.

My scientist friends are fond of saying that one sample makes very poor statistics, so I wonder if the total lack of religion in this society really proves anything. We know that the Thalassans were also very carefully selected genetically to eliminate as many undesirable social traits as possible. Yes, yes - I know that only about fifteen per cent of human behaviour is determined by the genes - but that fraction is very important! The Lassans certainly seem remarkably free from such unpleasant traits as envy, intolerance, jealousy, anger. Is this entirely the result of cultural conditioning?

How I would love to know what happened to the seedships that were sent out by those religious groups in the twenty-sixth century! The Mormons' Ark of the Covenant, the Sword of the Prophet - there were half a dozen of them. I wonder if any of them succeeded, and if so what part religion played in their success or their failure. Perhaps one day, when the local communications grid is established, we'll find what happened to those early pioneers.

One result of Thalassa's total atheism is a serious shortage of expletives. When a Lassan drops something on his toe, he's at a loss for words. Even the usual references to bodily functions aren't much help because they're all taken for granted. About the only general-purpose exclamation is 'Krakan!' and that's badly overworked. But it does show what an impression Mount Krakan made when it erupted four hundred years ago; I hope I'll have a chance of visiting it before we leave.

That's still many months ahead, yet already I fear it. Not for the possible danger - if anything happens to the ship, I'll never know. But because it will mean that another link with Earth has been broken - and, my dearest, with you.

 

13 Task Force

'The president's not going to like this,' Mayor Waldron said with relish. 'He's set his heart on getting you to North Island.'

'I know,' Deputy Captain Malina answered. 'And we'll be sorry to disappoint him - he's been very helpful. But North Island's far too rocky; the only suitable coastal areas are already developed. Yet there's a completely deserted bay, with a gently sloping beach, only nine kilometres from Tarna - it will be perfect.'

'Sounds too good to be true. Why is it deserted, Brant?'

'That was the Mangrove Project. All the trees died - we still don't know why - and no one's had the heart to tidy up the mess. It looks terrible, and smells worse.'

'So it's already an ecological disaster area - you're welcome, Captain! You can only improve matters.'

'I can assure you that our plant will be very handsome and won't damage the environment in the slightest. And of course it will all be dismantled when we leave. Unless you want to keep it.'

'Thank you - but I doubt if we'd have much use for several hundred tons of ice a day. Meanwhile, what facilities can Tarna offer - accommodation, catering, transport? - we'll be happy to oblige. I assume that quite a number of you will be coming down to work here.'

'Probably about a hundred, and we appreciate your offer of hospitality. But I'm" afraid we'd be terrible guests: we'll be having conferences with the ship at all hours of the day and night. So we have to stick together - and as soon as we've assembled our little prefabricated village, we'll move into it with all our equipment. I'm sorry if this seems ungracious - but any other arrangement simply wouldn't be practical.'

'I suppose you're right,' the mayor sighed. She had been wondering how she could bend protocol and offer what passed for the hospitality suite to the spectacular Lieutenant Commander Lorenson instead of to Deputy Captain Malina. The problem had appeared insoluble; now, alas, it would not even arise.

She felt so discouraged that she was almost tempted to call North Island and invite her last official consort back for a vacation. But the wretch would probably turn her down again, and she simply couldn't face that.

 

14 Mirissa

Even when she was a very old woman, Mirissa Leonidas could still remember the exact moment when she first set eyes on Loren. There was no one else - not even Brant - of which this was true.

Novelty had nothing to do with it; she had already met several of the Earthmen before encountering Loren, and they had made no unusual impression on her. Most of them could have passed as Lassans if they had been left out in the sun for a few days.

But not Loren; his skin never tanned, and his startling hair became, if anything, even more silvery. That was certainly what had first drawn her notice as he was emerging from Mayor Waldron's office with two of his colleagues - all of them bearing that slightly frustrated look which was the usual outcome of a session with Tarna's lethargic and well-entrenched bureaucracy.

Their eyes had met, but for a moment only. Mirissa took a few more paces; then, without any conscious volition, she came to a dead halt and looked back over her shoulder - to see that the visitor was staring at her. Already, they both knew that their lives had been irrevocably changed.

Later that night, after they had made love, she asked Brant, 'Have they said how long they're staying?'

'You do choose the worst times,' he grumbled sleepily. 'At least a year. Maybe two. Goodnight - again.'

She knew better than to ask any more questions even though she still felt wide awake. For a long time she lay open-eyed, watching the swift shadows of the inner moon sweep across the floor while the cherished body beside her sank gently into sleep.

She had known not a few men before Brant, but since they had been together she had been utterly indifferent to anyone else. Then why this sudden interest - she still pretended it was no stronger than that - in a man she had glimpsed only for a few seconds and whose very name she did not even know? (Though that would certainly be one of tomorrow's first priorities.)

Mirissa prided herself on being honest and clear-sighted; she looked down on women - or men - who let themselves be ruled by their emotions. Part of the attraction, she was quite sure, was the element of novelty, the glamour of vast new horizons. To be able to speak to someone who had actually walked through the cities of Earth - had witnessed the last hours of the solar system -and was now on the way to new suns was a wonder beyond her wildest dreams. It made her once more aware of that underlying dissatisfaction with the placid tempo of Thalassan life despite her happiness with Brant.

Or was it merely contentment and not true happiness? What did she really want? Whether she could find it with these strangers from the stars she did not know, but before they left Thalassa forever, she meant to try.

That same morning, Brant had also visited Mayor Waldron, who greeted him with slightly less than her usual warmth when he dumped the fragments of his fish-trap on her desk.

'I know you've been busy with more important matters,' he said, 'but what are we going to do about this?'

The mayor looked without enthusiasm at the tangled mess of cables. It was hard to focus on the day-to-day routine after the heady excitements of interstellar politics.

'What do you think happened?' she asked.

'It's obviously deliberate - see how this wire was twisted until it broke. Not only was the grid damaged, but sections have been taken away. I'm sure no one on South Island would do such a thing. What motive would they have? And I'd be bound to find out, sooner or later ...'

Brant's pregnant pause left no doubt as to what would happen then.

'Who do you suspect?'

'Ever since I started experimenting with electric trapping, I've been fighting not only the Conservers but those crazy people who believe that all food should be synthetic because it's wicked to eat living creatures, like animals - or even plants.'

'The Conservers, at least, may have a point. If your trap is as efficient as you claim, it could upset the ecological balance they're always talking about.'

'The regular reef census would tell us if that was happening, and we'd just switch off for a while. Anyway, it's the pelagics I'm really after; my field seems to attract them from up to three or four kilometres away. And even if everyone on the Three Islands ate nothing but fish, we couldn't make a dent in the oceanic population.'

'I'm sure you're right - as far as the indigenous pseudofish are concerned. And much good that does, since most of them are too poisonous to be worth processing. Are you sure that the Terran stock has established itself securely? You might be the last straw, as the old saying goes.'

Brant looked at the mayor with respect; she was continually surprising him with shrewd questions like this. It never occurred to him that she would not have held her position for so long if there was not a great deal more in her than met the eye.

'I'm afraid the tuna aren't going to survive; it will be a few billion years before the oceans are salty enough for them. But the trout and salmon are doing very well.'

'And they're certainly delicious; they might even overcome the moral scruples of the Synthesists. Not that I really accept your interesting theory. Those people may talk, but they don't do anything.'

'They released a whole herd of cattle from that experimental farm a couple of years ago.'

'You mean they tried to - the cows walked straight home again. Everyone laughed so much that they called off any further demonstrations. I simply can't imagine that they'd go to all this trouble.' She gestured towards the broken grid.

'It wouldn't be difficult - a small boat at night, a couple of divers - the water's only twenty metres deep.'

'Well, I'll make some inquiries. Meanwhile, I want you to do two things.'

'What?' Brant said, trying not to sound suspicious and failing completely.

'Repair the grid - Tech Stores will give you anything you need. And stop making any more accusations until you're one hundred per cent certain. If you're wrong, you'll look foolish and may have to apologize. If you're right, you may scare the perpetrators away before we can catch them. Understand?'

Brant's jaw dropped slightly: he had never seen the mayor in so incisive a mood. He gathered up Exhibit A and made a somewhat chastened departure.

He might have been even more chastened - or perhaps merely amused - to know that Mayor Waldron was no longer quite so enamoured of him.

Assistant Chief Engineer Loren Lorenson had impressed more than one of Tarna's citizens that morning.

 

15 Terra Nova

Such a reminder of Earth was an unfortunate name for the settlement, and no one admitted responsibility. But it was slightly more glamorous than 'base camp', and was quickly accepted.

The complex of prefabricated huts had shot up with astonishing speed - literally overnight. It was Tarna's first demonstration of Earthpersons - or rather Earth robots - in action, and the villagers were hugely impressed. Even Brant, who had always considered that robots were more trouble than they were worth, except for hazardous or monotonous work, began to have second thoughts. There was one elegant general-purpose mobile constructor that operated with such blinding speed that it was often impossible to follow its movements. Wherever it went, it was followed by an admiring crowd of small Lassans. When they got in its way, it politely stopped whatever it was doing until the coast was clear. Brant decided that this was exactly the kind of assistant he needed; perhaps there was some way he could persuade the visitors...

By the end of a week, Terra Nova was a fully functioning microcosm of the great ship orbiting beyond the atmosphere. There was plain but comfortable accommodation for a hundred crewmembers, with all the life-support systems they needed - as well as library, gymnasium, swimming pool, and theatre. The Lassans approved of these facilities, and hastened to make full use of them. As a result, the population of Terra Nova was usually at least double the nominal one hundred.

Most of the guests - whether invited or not - were anxious to help and determined to make their visitors' stay as comfortable as possible. Such friendliness, though very welcome and much appreciated, was often embarrassing. The Lassans were insatiably inquisitive, and the concept of privacy was almost unknown to them. A 'Please Do Not Disturb' sign was often regarded as a personal challenge, which led to interesting complications...

'You're all senior officers and highly intelligent adults,' Captain Bey had said at the last staff conference aboard ship. 'So it shouldn't be necessary to tell you this. Try not to get involved in any - ah - entanglements until we know exactly how the Lassans think about such matters. They appear very easygoing, but that could be deceptive. Don't you agree, Dr Kaldor?'

'I can't pretend, Captain, to be an authority on Lassan mores after so short a period of study. But there are some interesting historical parallels, when the old sailing-ships on Earth put to port after long sea voyages - I expect many of you have seen that classic video antique, Mutiny on the Bounty.'

'I trust, Dr Kaldor, that you're not comparing me to Captain Cook - I mean Bligh.'

'It wouldn't be an insult; the real Bligh was a brilliant seaman, and most unfairly maligned. At this stage, all we need are common sense, good manners - and, as you indicated, caution.'

Had Kaldor looked in his direction, Loren wondered, when he made that remark? Surely it was not already so obvious ...

After all, his official duties put him in contact with Brant Falconer a dozen times a day. There was no way he could avoid meeting Mirissa - even if he wished to.

They had never yet been alone together, and had still exchanged no more than a few words of polite conversation. But already, there was no need to say anything more.

 

16 Party Games

'It's called a baby,' Mirissa said, 'and despite appearances, one day it will grow up into a perfectly normal human being.'

She was smiling, yet there was moisture in her eyes. It had never occurred to her, until she noticed Loren's fascination, that there were probably more children in the little village of Tarna than there had been on the entire planet Earth during the final decades of virtually zero birthrate.

'Is it ... yours?' he asked quietly.

'Well, first of all it's not an it; it's a he. Brant's nephew Lester - we're looking after him while his parents are on North Island.'

'He's beautiful. Can I hold him?'

As if on cue, Lester started to wail.

'That wouldn't be a good idea,' laughed Mirissa, scooping him up hastily and heading towards the nearest bathroom. 'I recognize the signals. Let Brant or Kumar show you round while we're waiting for the other guests.'

The Lassans loved parties and missed no opportunity for arranging them. The arrival of Magellan was, quite literally, the chance of a lifetime - indeed, of many lifetimes. If they had been rash enough to accept all the invitations they received, the visitors would have spent every waking moment staggering from one official or unofficial reception to another. None too soon, the captain had issued one of his infrequent but implacable directives - 'Bey thunderbolts', or simply 'Beybolts', as they were wryly called - rationing his officers to a maximum of one party per five days. There were some who considered that, in view of the time it often took to recover from Lassan hospitality, this was much too generous.

The Leonidas residence, currently occupied by Mirissa, Kumar, and Brant, was a large ring-shaped building that had been the family's home for six generations. One storey high - there were few upper floors in Tarna - it enclosed a grass-covered patio about thirty metres across. At the very centre was a small pond, complete with a tiny island accessible by a picturesque wooden bridge. And on the island was a solitary palm-tree, which did not seem to be in the best of health.

'They have to keep replacing it,' Brant said apologetically. 'Some Terran plants do very well here - others just fade away despite all the chemical boosters we give them. It's the same problem with the fish we've tried to introduce. Freshwater farms work fine, of course, but we don't have space for them. It's frustrating to think that there's a million times as much ocean, if only we could use it properly.'

In Loren's private opinion, Brant Falconer was something of a bore when he started talking about the sea. He had to admit, however, that it was a safer subject of conversation than Mirissa, who had now managed to get rid of Lester and was greeting the new guests as they arrived.

Could he ever have dreamed, Loren asked himself, that he would find himself in a situation like this? He had been in love before, but the memories - even the names - were mercifully blurred by the erasing programs they had all undergone before leaving the solar system. He would not even attempt to recapture them: why torment himself with images from a past that had been utterly destroyed?

Even Kitani's face was blurring, though he had seen her in the hibernaculum only a week ago. She was part of a future they had planned but might never share: Mirissa was here and now - full of life and laughter, not frozen in half a millennium of sleep. She had made him feel whole once more, joyful in the knowledge that the strain and exhaustion of the Last Days had not, after all, robbed him of his youth.

Every time they were together, he felt the pressure that told him he was a man again; until it had been relieved, he would know little peace and would not even be able to perform his work efficiently. There had been times when he had seen Mirissa's face superimposed on the Mangrove Bay plans and flow diagrams, and had been forced to give the computer a pause command, before they could continue their joint mental conversation. It was a peculiarly exquisite torture to spend a couple of hours within metres of her, able to exchange no more than polite trivialities.

To Loren's relief, Brant suddenly excused himself and hurried away. Loren quickly discovered the reason.

'Commander Lorenson!' Mayor Waldron said. 'I hope Tarna's been treating you well.'

Loren groaned inwardly. He knew that he was supposed to be polite to the mayor, but the social graces had never been his strong point.

'Very well, thank you. I don't believe you've met these gentlemen -'

He called, much more loudly than was really necessary, across the patio to a group of colleagues who had just arrived. By good luck, they were all lieutenants; even off duty, rank had its privileges, and he never hesitated to use it.

'Mayor Waldron, this is Lieutenant Fletcher - your first time down, isn't it Owen? Lieutenant Werner Ng, Lieutenant Ranjit Winson, Lieutenant Karl Bosley ...'

Just like the clannish Martians, he thought, always sticking together. Well, that made them a splendid target, and they were a personable group of young men. He did not believe that the mayor even noticed when he made his strategic withdrawal.

Doreen Chang would have much preferred to talk to the captain, but he had made a high-velocity token appearance, downed one drink, apologized to his hosts, and departed.

'Why won't he let me interview him?' she asked Kaldor, who had no such inhibitions and had already logged several days' worth of audio and video time.

'Captain Sirdar Bey,' he answered, 'is in a privileged position. Unlike the rest of us, he doesn't have to explain - or to apologize.'

'I detect a note of mild sarcasm in your voice,' the Thalassa Broadcasting Corporation's star newsperson said.

'It wasn't intended. I admire the captain enormously, and even accept his opinion of me - with reservations, of course. Er - are you recording?'

'Not now. Too much background noise.'

'Lucky for you I'm such a trusting person since there's no way I could tell if you were.'

'Definitely off the record, Moses. What does he think of you?'

'He's glad to have my views, and my experience, but he doesn't take me very seriously. I know exactly why. He once said, "Moses - you like power but not responsibility. I enjoy both." It was a very shrewd statement; it sums up the difference between us.'

'How did you answer?'

'What could I say? It was perfectly true. The only time I got involved in practical politics was - well, not a disaster, but I never really enjoyed it.'

'The Kaldor Crusade?'

'Oh - you know about that. Silly name - it annoyed me. And that was another point of disagreement between the captain and myself. He thought - still thinks, I'm sure - the Directive ordering us to avoid all planets with life-potential is a lot of sentimental nonsense. Another quote from the good captain: "Law I understand. Metalaw is bal - er, balderdash".'

'This is fascinating - one day you must let me record it.'

'Definitely not. What's happening over there?'

Doreen Chang was a persistent lady, but she knew when to give up.

'Oh, that's Mirissa's favourite gas-sculpture. Surely you had them on Earth.'

'Of course. And since we're still off the record, I don't think it's art. But it's amusing.'

The main lights had been switched off in one section of the patio, and about a dozen guests had gathered around what appeared to be a very large soap bubble, almost a metre in diameter. As Chang and Kaldor walked towards it, they could see the first swirls of colour forming inside, like the birth of a spiral nebula.

'It's called "Life",' Doreen said, 'and it's been in Mirissa's family for two hundred years. But the gas is beginning to leak; I can remember when it was much brighter.'

Even so, it was impressive. The battery of electron guns and lasers in the base had been programmed by some patient, long-dead artist to generate a series of geometrical shapes that slowly evolved into organic structures. From the centre of the sphere, ever more complex forms appeared, expanded out of sight, and were replaced by others. In one witty sequence, single-celled creatures were shown climbing a spiral staircase, recognizable at once as a representation of the DNA molecule. With each step, something new was added; within a few minutes, the display had encompassed the four-billion-year odyssey from amoeba to Man.

Then the artist tried to go beyond, and Kaldor lost him. The contortions of the fluorescent gas became too complex and too abstract. Perhaps if one saw the display a few more times, a pattern would emerge -

'What happened to the sound?' Doreen asked when the bubble's maelstrom of seething colours abruptly winked out. 'There used to be some very good music, especially at the end.'

'I was afraid someone would ask that question,' Mirissa said with an apologetic smile. 'We're not certain whether the trouble is in the playback mechanism or the program itself.'

'Surely you have a backup!'

'Oh, yes, of course. But the spare module is somewhere in Kumar's room, probably buried under bits of his canoe. Until you've seen his den, you won't understand what entropy really means.'

'It's not a canoe - it's a kayak,' protested Kumar, who had just arrived with a pretty local girl clinging to each arm. 'And what's entropy?'

One of the young Martians was foolish enough to attempt an explanation by pouring two drinks of different colours into the same glass. Before he could get very far, his voice was drowned by a blast of music from the gas-sculpture.

'You see!' Kumar shouted above the din, with obvious pride, 'Brant can fix anything!'

Anything? thought Loren. I wonder ... I wonder ...

 

17 Chain of Command

From: Captain

To: All Crew Members

CHRONOLOGY

As there has already been a great deal of unnecessary confusion in this matter, I wish to make the following points:

1. All ship's records and schedules will remain on Earth Time — corrected for relativistic effects — until the end of the voyage. All clocks and timing systems aboard ship will continue to run on ET.

2. For convenience, ground crews will use Thalassan time (TT) when necessary, but will keep all records in ET with TT in parentheses.

3. To remind you:

The duration of the Thalassan Mean Solar Day is 29.4325 hours ET. There are 313.1561 Thalassan days in the Thalassan Sidereal Year, which is divided into 11 months of 28 days. January is omitted from the calendar, but the five extra days to make up the total of 313 follow immediately after the last day (28th) of December. Leap days are intercalated every six years, but there will be none during our stay.

4. Since the Thalassan day is 22% longer than Earth's, and the number of those days in its year is 14% shorter, the actual length of the Thalassan year is only about 5% longer than Earth's. As you are all aware, this has one practical convenience, in the matter of birthdays. Chronological age means almost the same on Thalassa as on Earth. A 21 -year-old Thalassan has lived as long as a 20-year old Earth-person. The Lassan calendar starts at First Landing, which was 3109 ET. The current year is 718TT or 754 Earth years later.

5. Finally — and we can also be thankful for this — there is only one Time Zone to worry about on Thalassa.

Sirdar Bey (Capt.)

3864.05.26.20.30 ET

718.00.02.1 5.00 TT

'Who would have thought anything so simple could be so complicated!' laughed Mirissa when she had scanned the printout pinned up on the Terra Nova Bulletin Board. 'I suppose this is one of the famous Beybolts. What sort of man is the captain? I've never had a real chance of talking to him.'

'He's not an easy person to know,' Moses Kaldor answered. 'I don't think I've spoken to him in private more than a dozen times. And he's the only man on the ship who everyone calls 'Sir' – always. Except maybe Deputy Captain Malina, when they're alone together ... Incidentally, that notice was certainly not a genuine Beybolt - it's too technical. Science Officer Varley and Secretary LeRoy must have drafted it. Captain Bey has a remarkable grasp of engineering principles - much better than I do - but he's primarily an administrator. And occasionally, when he has to be, commander-in-chief.'

'I'd hate his responsibility.'

'It's a job someone has to do. Routine problems can usually be solved by consulting the senior officers and the computer banks. But sometimes a decision has to be made by a single individual, who has the authority to enforce it. That's why you need a captain. You can't run a ship by a committee - at least not all the time.'

'I think that's the way we run Thalassa. Can you imagine President Farradine as captain of anything?'

'These peaches are delicious,' Kaldor said tactfully, helping himself to another, though he knew perfectly well that they had been intended for Loren. 'But you've been lucky; you've had no real crisis for seven hundred years! Didn't one of your own people once say: "Thalassa has no history - only statistics"?'

'Oh, that's not true! What about Mount Krakan?'

'That was a natural disaster - and hardly a major one. I'm referring to, ah, political crises: civil unrest, that sort of thing.'

'We can thank Earth for that. You gave us a Jefferson Mark 3 Constitution - someone once called it Utopia in two megabytes -and it's worked amazingly well. The program hasn't been modified for three hundred years. We're still only on the Sixth Amendment.'

'And long may you stay there,' Kaldor said fervently. 'I should hate to think that we were responsible for a Seventh.'

'If that happens, it will be processed first in the Archives' memory banks. When are you coming to visit us again? There are so many things I want to show you.'

'Not as many as I want to see. You must have so much that will be useful for us on Sagan 2, even though it's a very different kind of world.' ('And a far less attractive one,' he added to himself.)

While they were talking, Loren had come quietly into the reception area, obviously on his way from the games room to the showers. He was wearing the briefest of shorts and had a towel draped over his bare shoulders. The sight left Mirissa distinctly weak at the knees.

'I suppose you've beaten everyone, as usual,' Kaldor said. 'Doesn't it get boring?'

Loren gave a wry grin.

'Some of the young Lassans show promise. One's just taken three points off me. Of course, I was playing with my left hand.'

'In the very unlikely event he hasn't already told you,' Kaldor remarked to Mirissa, 'Loren was once table-tennis champion on Earth.'

'Don't exaggerate, Moses. I was only about number five - and standards were miserably low towards the end. Any Third Millennium Chinese player would have pulverized me.'

'I don't suppose you've thought of teaching Brant,' Kaldor said mischievously. 'That should be interesting.'

There was a brief silence. Then Loren answered, smugly but accurately: 'It wouldn't be fair.'

'As it happens,' Mirissa said, 'Brant would like to show you something.'

'Oh.'

'You said you've never been on a boat.'

'That's true.'

'Then you have an invitation to join Brant and Kumar at Pier Three - eight-thirty tomorrow morning.'

Loren turned to Kaldor.

'Do you think it's safe for me to go?' he asked in mock seriousness. 'I don't know how to swim.'

'I shouldn't worry,' Kaldor answered helpfully. 'If they're planning a one-way trip for you, that won't make the slightest difference.'

 

18 Kumar

Only one tragedy had darkened Kumar Leonidas's eighteen years of life; he would always be ten centimetres shorter than his heart's desire. It was not surprising that his nickname was 'The Little Lion' - though very few dared use it to his face.

To compensate for his lack of height, he had worked assiduously on width and depth. Many times Mirissa had told him, in amused exasperation, 'Kumar - if you spent as much time building your brain as your body, you'd be the greatest genius on Thalassa.' What she had never told him - and scarcely admitted even to herself - was that the spectacle of his regular morning exercises often aroused most unsisterly feelings in her breast as well as a certain jealousy of all the other admirers who had gathered to watch. At one time or other this had included most of Kumar's age group. Although the envious rumour that he had made love to all the girls and half the boys in Tarna was wild hyperbole, it did contain a considerable element of truth.

But Kumar, despite the intellectual gulf between him and his sister, was no muscle-bound moron. If anything really interested him, he would not be satisfied until he had mastered it, no matter how long that took. He was a superb seaman and for over two years, with occasional help from Brant, had been building an exquisite four-metre kayak. The hull was complete, but he had not yet started on the deck.

One day, he swore, he was going to launch it and everyone would stop laughing. Meanwhile, the phrase 'Kumar's kayak' had come to mean any unfinished job around Tarna - of which, indeed, there were a great many.

Apart from this common Lassan tendency to procrastinate, Kumar's chief defects were an adventurous nature and a fondness for sometimes risky practical jokes. This, it was widely believed, would someday get him into serious trouble.

But it was impossible to be angry with even his most outrageous pranks, for they lacked all malice. He was completely open, even transparent; no one could ever imagine him telling a lie. For this, he could be forgiven much, and frequently was.

The arrival of the visitors had, of course, been the most exciting event in his life. He was fascinated by their equipment, the sound, video, and sensory recordings they had brought, the stories they told - everything about them. And because he saw more of Loren than any of the others, it was not surprising that Kumar attached himself to him.

This was not a development that Loren altogether appreciated. If there was one thing even more unwelcome than an inconvenient mate, it was that traditional spoilsport, an adhesive kid brother.

 

19 Pretty Polly

'I still can't believe it, Loren,' Brant Falconer said. 'You've never been in a boat - or on a ship?'

'I seem to remember paddling a rubber dinghy across a small pond. That would have been when I was about five years old.'

'Then you'll enjoy this. Not even a swell to upset your stomach. Perhaps we can persuade you to dive with us.'

'No, thanks - I'll take one new experience at a time. And I've learned never to get in the way when other men have work to do.'

Brant was right; he was beginning to enjoy himself, as the hydrojets drove the little trimaran almost silently out toward the reef. Yet soon after he had climbed aboard and seen the firm safety of the shoreline rapidly receding, he had known a moment of near panic.

Only a sense of the ridiculous had saved him from making a spectacle of himself. He had travelled fifty light-years - the longest journey ever made by human beings - to reach this spot. And now he was worried about the few hundred metres to the nearest land.

Yet there was no way in which he could turn down the challenge. As he lay at ease in the stern, watching Falconer at the wheel (how had he acquired that white scar across his shoulders? - oh, yes, he had mentioned something about a crash in a microflyer, years ago ...), he wondered just what was going through the Lassan's mind.

It was hard to believe that any human society, even the most enlightened and easygoing, could be totally free from jealousy or some form of sexual possessiveness. Not that there was - so far, alas! - much for Brant to be jealous about.

Loren doubted if he had spoken as many as a hundred words to Mirissa; most of them had been in the company of her husband. Correction: on Thalassa, the terms husband and wife were not used until the birth of the first child. When a son was chosen, the mother usually - but not invariably - assumed the name of the father. If the first born was a girl, both kept the mother's name -at least until the birth of the second, and final, child.

There were very few things indeed that shocked the Lassans. Cruelty - especially to children - was one of them. And having a third pregnancy, on this world with only twenty thousand square kilometres of land, was another.

Infant mortality was so low that multiple births were sufficient to maintain a steady population. There had been one famous case - the only one in the whole history of Thalassa - when a family had been blessed, or afflicted, with double quintuplets. Although the poor mother could hardly be blamed, her memory was now surrounded with that aura of delicious depravity that had once enveloped Lucrezia Borgia, Messalina, or Faustine.

I'll have to play my cards very, very carefully, Loren told himself. That Mirissa found him attractive, he already knew. He could read it in her expression and in the tone of her voice. And he had even stronger proof in accidental contacts of hand, and soft collisions of body that had lasted longer than were strictly necessary.

They both knew that it was only a matter of time. And so, Loren was quite sure, did Brant. Yet despite the mutual tension between them, they were still friendly enough. The pulsation of the jets died away, and the boat drifted to a halt, close to a large glass buoy that was gently bobbing up and down in the water.

'That's our power supply,' Brant said. 'We only need a few hundred watts, so we can manage with solar cells. One advantage of freshwater seas - it wouldn't work on Earth. Your oceans were much too salty - they'd have gobbled up kilowatts and kilowatts.'

'Sure you won't change your mind, uncle?' Kumar grinned.

Loren shook his head. Though it had startled him at first, he had now grown quite accustomed to the universal salutation employed by younger Lassans. It was really rather pleasant, suddenly acquiring scores of nieces and nephews.

'No, thanks. I'll stay and watch through the underwater window, just in case you get eaten by sharks.'

'Sharks!' Kumar said wistfully. 'Wonderful, wonderful animals - I wish we had some here. It would make diving much more exciting.'

Loren watched with a technician's interest as Brant and Kumar adjusted their gear. Compared with the equipment one needed to wear in space, it was remarkably simple - and the pressure tank was a tiny thing that could easily fit in the palm of one hand.

'That oxygen tank,' he said, 'I wouldn't have thought it could last more than a couple of minutes.'

Brant and Kumar looked at him reproachfully.

'Oxygen!' snorted Brant. 'That's a deadly poison, at below twenty metres. This bottle holds air - and it's only the emergency supply, good for fifteen minutes.'

He pointed to the gill-like structure on the backpack that Kumar was already wearing.

'There's all the oxygen you need dissolved in seawater, if you can extract it. But that takes energy, so you have to have a powercell to run the pumps and filters. I could stay down for a week with this unit if I wanted to.'

He tapped the greenly fluorescent computer display on his left wrist.

'This gives all the information I need - depth, powercell status, time to come up, decompression stops - '

Loren risked another foolish question.

'Why are you wearing a facemask, while Kumar isn't?'

'But I am.' Kumar grinned. 'Look carefully.'

'Oh ... I see. Very neat.'

'But a nuisance,' Brant said, 'unless you practically live in the water, like Kumar. I tried contacts once, and found they hurt my eyes. So I stick to the good old facemask - much less trouble. Ready?'

'Ready, skipper.'

They rolled simultaneously over port and starboard sides, their movements so well synchronized that the boat scarcely rocked. Through the thick glass panel set in the keel, Loren watched them glide effortlessly down to the reef. It was, he knew, more than twenty metres down but looked much closer.

Tools and cabling had already been dumped there, and the two divers went swiftly to work repairing the broken grids. Occasionally, they exchanged cryptic monosyllables, but most of the time they worked in complete silence. Each knew his job - and his partner - so well that there was no need for speech.

Time went very swiftly for Loren; he felt he was looking into a new world, as indeed he was. Though he had seen innumerable video records made in the terrestrial oceans, almost all the life that moved below him now was completely unfamiliar. There were whirling discs and pulsating jellies, undulating carpets and corkscrewing spirals - but very few creatures that, by any stretch of the imagination, could be called genuine fish. Just once, near the edge of vision, he caught a glimpse of a swiftly-moving torpedo which he was almost sure he recognized. If he was correct, it, too, was an exile from Earth.

He thought that Brant and Kumar had forgotten all about him when he was startled by a message over the underwater intercom.

'Coming up. We'll be with you in twenty minutes. Everything O.K.?'

'Fine,' Loren answered. 'Was that a fish from Earth I spotted just now?'

'I never noticed.'

'Uncle's right, Brant - a twenty-kilo mutant trout went by five minutes ago. Your welding arc scared it away.'

They had now left the sea bed and were slowly ascending along the graceful catenary of the anchor line. About five metres below the surface they came to a halt.

'This is the dullest part of every dive,' Brant said. 'We have to wait here for fifteen minutes. Channel 2, please - thanks - but not quite so loud.

The music-to-decompress-by had probably been chosen by Kumar; its jittery rhythm hardly seemed appropriate to the peaceful underwater scene. Loren was heartily glad he was not immersed in it and was happy to switch off the player as soon as the two divers started to move upward again.

'That's a good morning's work,' Brant said, as he scrambled on to the deck. 'Voltage and current normal. Now we can go home.'

Loren's inexpert aid in helping them out of their equipment was gratefully received. Both men were tired and cold but quickly revived after several cups of the hot, sweet liquid the Lassans called tea, though it bore little resemblance to any terrestrial drink of that name.

Kumar started the motor and got under way, while Brant scrabbled through the jumble of gear at the bottom of the boat and located a small, brightly coloured box.

'No, thanks,' Loren said, as he handed him one of the mildly narcotic tablets. 'I don't want to acquire any local habits that won't be easy to break.'

He regretted the remark as soon as it was made; it must have been prompted by some perverse impulse of the subconscious - or perhaps by his sense of guilt. But Brant had obviously seen no deeper meaning as he lay back, with his hands clasped under his head, staring up into the cloudless sky.

'You can see Magellan in the daytime,' Loren said, anxious to change the subject, 'if you know exactly where to look. But I've never done it myself.'

'Mirissa has - often,' Kumar interjected. 'And she showed me how. You only have to call Astronet for the transit time and then go out and lie on your back. It's like a bright star, straight overhead, and it doesn't seem to be moving at all. But if you look away for even a second, you've lost it.'

Unexpectedly, Kumar throttled back the engine, cruised at low power for a few minutes, then brought the boat to a complete halt. Loren glanced around to get his bearings, and was surprised to see that they were now at least a kilometre from Tarna. There was another buoy rocking in the water beside them, bearing a large letter P and carrying a red flag.

'Why have we stopped?' asked Loren.

Kumar chuckled and started emptying a small bucket over the side. Luckily, it had been sealed until now; the contents looked suspiciously like blood but smelled far worse. Loren moved as tar away as possible in the limited confines of the boat.

'Just calling on an old friend,' Brant said very softly. 'Sit still -don't make any noise. She's quite nervous.'

She? thought Loren. What's going on?

Nothing whatsoever happened for at least five minutes; Loren would not have believed that Kumar could have remained still for so long. Then he noticed that a dark, curved band had appeared, a few metres from the boat, just below the surface of the water. He traced it with his eyes, and realized that it formed a ring, completely encircling them.

He also realized, at about the same moment, that Brant and Kumar were not watching it; they were watching him. So they're trying to give me a surprise, he told himself; well, we'll see about that ...

Even so, it took all of Loren's willpower to stifle a cry of sheer terror when what seemed to be a wall of brilliantly - no, putrescently - pink flesh emerged from the sea. It rose, dripping, to about half the height of a man and formed an unbroken barrier around them. And as a final horror, its upper surface was almost completely covered with writhing snakes coloured vivid reds and blues.

An enormous tentacle-fringed mouth had risen from the deep and was about to engulf them ...

Yet clearly they were in no danger; he could tell that from his companions' amused expressions.

'What in God's - Krakan's - name is that?' he whispered, trying to keep his voice steady.

'You reacted fine,' Brant said admiringly. 'Some people hide in the bottom of the boat. It's Polly - for polyp. Pretty Polly. Colonial invertebrate - billions of specialized cells, all cooperating. You had very similar animals on Earth though I don't believe they were anything like as large.'

'I'm sure they weren't,' Loren answered fervently. 'And if you don't mind me asking - how do we get out of here?'

Brant nodded to Kumar, who brought the engines up to full-power. With astonishing speed for something so huge, the living wall around them sank back into the sea, leaving nothing but an oily ripple on the surface.

'The vibration's scared it,' Brant explained. 'Look through the viewing glass - now you can see the whole beast.'

Below them, something like a tree-trunk ten metres thick was retracting towards the seabed. Now Loren realized that the 'snakes' he had seen wriggling on the surface were slender tentacles; back in their normal element they were waving weightlessly again, searching the waters for what - or whom -they might devour.

'What a monster!' he breathed, relaxing for the first time in many minutes. A warm feeling of pride - even exhilaration -swept over him. He knew that he had passed another test; he had won Brant's and Kumar's approval and accepted it with gratitude.

'Isn't that thing - dangerous?' he asked.

'Of course; that's why we have the warning buoy.'

'Frankly, I'd be tempted to kill it.'

'Why?' Brant asked, genuinely shocked. 'What harm does it do?'

'Well - surely a creature that size must catch an enormous number of fish.'

'Yes, but only Lassan - not fish that we can eat. And here's the interesting thing about it. For a long time we wondered how it could persuade fish - even the stupid ones here - to swim into its maw. Eventually we discovered that it secretes some chemical lure, and that's what started us thinking about electric traps. Which reminds me ..."

Brant reached for his comset.

'Tarna Three calling Tarna Autorecord - Brant here. We've fixed the grid. Everything functioning normally. No need to acknowledge. End message.'

But to everyone's surprise, there was an immediate response from a familiar voice.

'Hello, Brant, Dr Lorenson. I'm happy to hear that. And I've got some interesting news for you. Like to hear it?'

'Of course, Mayor,' Brant answered as the two men exchanged glances of mutual amusement. 'Go ahead.'

'Central Archives has dug up something surprising. All this has happened before. Two hundred fifty years ago, they tried to build a reef out from North Island by electroprecipitation - a technique that had worked well on Earth. But after a few weeks, the underwater cables were broken - some of them stolen. The matter was never followed up because the experiment was a total failure, anyway. Not enough minerals in the water to make it worthwhile. So there you are - you can't blame the Conservers. They weren't around in those days.'

Brant's face was such a study in astonishment that Loren burst out laughing.

'And you tried to surprise me!' he said. 'Well, you certainly proved that there were things in the sea that I'd never imagined.

'But now it looks as if there are some things that you never imagined, either.'

 

20 Idyll

The Tarnans thought it was very funny and pretended not to believe him.

'First you've never been in a boat - now you say you can't ride a bicycle!'

'You should be ashamed of yourself,' Mirissa had chided him, with a twinkle in her eye. 'The most efficient method of transportation ever invented - and you've never tried it!'

'Not much use in spaceships and too dangerous in cities,' Loren had retorted. 'Anyway, what is there to learn?'

He soon discovered that there was a good deal; biking was not quite as easy as it looked. Though it took real talent actually to fall off the low centre-of-gravity, small-wheeled machines (he managed it several times) his initial attempts were frustrating. He would not have persisted without Mirissa's assurance that it was the best way to discover the island - and his own hope that it would also be the best way to discover Mirissa.

The trick, he realized after a few more tumbles, was to ignore the problem completely and leave matters to the body's own reflexes. That was logical enough; if one had to think about every footstep one took, ordinary walking would be impossible. Although Loren accepted this intellectually, it was some time before he could trust his instincts. Once he had overcome that barrier, progress was swift. And at last, as he had hoped, Mirissa offered to show him the remoter byways of the island.

It would have been easy to believe that they were the only two people in the world, yet they could not be more than five kilometres from the village. They had certainly ridden much farther than that, but the narrow cycle track had been designed to take the most picturesque route, which also turned out to be the longest. Although Loren could locate himself in an instant from the position-finder in his comset, he did not bother. It was amusing to pretend to be lost.

Mirissa would have been happier if he had left the comset behind.

'Why must you carry that thing?" she had said, pointing to the control-studded band on his left forearm. 'It's nice to get away from people sometimes.'

'I agree, but ship's regs are very strict. If Captain Bey wanted me in a hurry and I didn't answer -'

'Well - what would he do? Put you in irons?'

'I'd prefer that to the lecture I'd undoubtedly get. Anyway, I've switched to sleep mode. If Shipcom overrides that, it will be a real emergency - and I'd certainly want to be in touch.'

Like almost all Terrans for more than a thousand years, Loren would have been far happier without his clothes than without his comset. Earth's history was replete with horror stories of careless or reckless individuals who had died - often within metres of safety - because they could not reach the red emergency button.

The cycle lane was clearly designed for economy, not heavy traffic. It was less than a metre wide, and at first the inexperienced Loren felt that he was riding along a tight-rope. He had to concentrate on Mirissa's back (not an unwelcome task) to avoid falling off. But after the first few kilometres he gained confidence and was able to enjoy the other views, as well. If they met anyone coming in the opposite direction, all parties would have to dismount; the thought of a collision at fifty klicks or more was too horrible to contemplate. It would be a long walk home, carrying their smashed bicycles ...

Most of the time they rode in perfect silence, broken only when Mirissa pointed out some unusual tree or exceptional beauty spot. The silence itself was something that Loren had never before experienced in his whole life; on Earth he had always been surrounded by sounds - and shipboard life was an entire symphony of reassuring mechanical noises, with occasional heart-stopping alarms.

Here the trees surrounded them with an invisible, anechoic blanket, so that every word seemed sucked into silence the moment it was uttered. At first the sheer novelty of the sensation made it enjoyable, but now Loren was beginning to yearn for something to fill the acoustic vacuum. He was even tempted to summon up a little background music from his comset but felt certain that Mirissa would not approve.

It was a great surprise, therefore, when he heard the beat of some now-familiar Thalassan dance music from the trees ahead. As the narrow road seldom proceeded in a straight line for more than two or three hundred metres, he could not see the source until they rounded a sharp curve and found themselves confronted by a melodious mechanical monster straddling the entire road surface and advancing towards them at a slow walking pace. It looked rather like a robot caterpillar. As they dismounted and let it trundle past, Loren realized that it was an automatic road repairer. He had noticed quite a few rough patches, and even pot-holes, and had been wondering when the South Island Department of Works would bestir itself to deal with them.

'Why the music?' he asked. 'This hardly seems the kind of machine that would appreciate it.'

He had barely made his little joke when the robot addressed him severely: 'Please do not ride on the road surface within one hundred metres of me, as it is still hardening. Please do not ride on the road surface within one hundred metres of me, as it is still hardening. Thank you.'

Mirissa laughed at his surprised expression.

'You're right, of course - it isn't very intelligent. The music is a warning to oncoming traffic.'

'Wouldn't some kind of hooter be more effective?'

'Yes, but how - unfriendly!'

They pushed their bicycles off the road and waited for the line of articulated tanks, control units, and road-laying mechanisms to move slowly past. Loren could not resist touching the freshly extruded surface; it was warm and slightly yielding, and looked moist even though it felt perfectly dry. Within seconds, however, it had become as hard as rock; Loren noted the faint impression of his fingerprint and thought wryly. I've made my mark on Thalassa - until the robot comes this way again.

Now the road was rising up into the hills, and Loren found that unfamiliar muscles in thigh and calf were beginning to call attention to themselves. A little auxiliary power would have been welcomed, but Mirissa had spurned the electric models as too effete. She had not slackened her speed in the least, so Loren had no alternative but to breathe deeply and keep up with her.

What was that faint roar from ahead? Surely no one could be testing rocket engines in the interior of South Island! The sound grew steadily louder as they pedalled onward; Loren identified it only seconds before the source came into view.

By Terran standards, the waterfall was not very impressive -perhaps one hundred metres high and twenty across. A small metal bridge glistening with spray spanned the pool of boiling foam in which it ended.

To Loren's relief, Mirissa dismounted and looked at him rather mischievously.

'Do you notice anything... peculiar?' she asked, waving towards the scene ahead.

'In what way?' Loren answered, fishing for clues. All he saw was an unbroken vista of trees and vegetation, with the road winding away through it on the other side of the fall.

'The trees - the trees!'

'What about them? I'm not a - botanist.'

'Nor am I, but it should be obvious. Just look at them.'

He looked, still puzzled. And presently he understood, because a tree is a piece of natural engineering - and he was an engineer.

A different designer had been at work on the other side of the waterfall. Although he could not name any of the trees among which he was standing, they were vaguely familiar, and he was sure that they came from Earth ... yes, that was certainly an oak, and somewhere, long ago, he had seen the beautiful yellow flowers on that low bush.

Beyond the bridge, it was a different world. The trees - were they really trees? - seemed crude and unfinished. Some had short, barrel-shaped trunks from which a few prickly branches extended; others resembled huge ferns; others looked like giant, skeletal fingers, with bristly haloes at the joints. And there were no flowers ...

'Now I understand. Thalassa's own vegetation.'

'Yes - only a few million years out of the sea. We call this the Great Divide. But it's more like a battlefront between two armies, and no one knows which side will win. Neither, if we can help it! The vegetation from Earth is more advanced; but the natives are better adapted to the chemistry. From time to time one side invades the other - and we move in with shovels before it can get a foothold.'

How strange, Loren thought as they pushed their bicycles across the slender bridge. For the first time since landing on Thalassa, I feel that I am indeed on an alien world ...

These clumsy trees and crude ferns could have been the raw material of the coal beds that had powered the Industrial Revolution - barely in time to save the human race. He could easily believe that a dinosaur might come charging out of the undergrowth at any moment; then he recalled that the terrible lizards had still been a hundred million years in the future when such plants had flourished on Earth ...

They were just remounting when Loren exclaimed, 'Krakan and damnation!'

'What's the matter?'

Loren collapsed on what, providentially, appeared to be a thick layer of wiry moss.

'Cramp,' he muttered through clenched teeth, grabbing at his knotted calf muscles.

'Let me,' Mirissa said in a concerned but confident voice.

Under her pleasant, though somewhat amateur, ministrations, the spasms slowly ebbed.

'Thanks,' Loren said after a while. 'That's much better. But please don't stop.'

'Did you really think I would?' she whispered.

And presently, between two worlds, they became one.

 

IV

Krakan

 

21 Academy

The membership of the Thalassan Academy of Science was strictly limited to the nice round binary number 100000000 - or, for those who preferred to count on their fingers, 256. Magellan's Science Officer approved of such exclusivity; it maintained standards. And the academy took its responsibilities very seriously; the president had confessed to her that at the moment there were only 241 members, as it had proved impossible to fill all the vacancies with qualified personnel.

Of those 241, no less than 105 were physically present in the academy's auditorium, and 116 had logged in on their comsets. It was a record turnout, and Dr Anne Varley felt extremely flattered - though she could not suppress a fleeting curiosity about the missing 20.

She also felt a mild discomfort at being introduced as one of Earth's leading astronomers - even though, alas, by the date of Magellan's departure, that had been all too true. Time and Chance had given the late director of the - late - Shklovskii Lunar Observatory this unique opportunity of survival. She knew perfectly well that she was no more than competent when judged by the standards of such giants as Ackerley or Chandrasekhar or Herschel - still less by those of Galileo or Copernicus or Ptolemy.

'Here it is,' she began. 'I'm sure you've all seen this map of Sagan - the best reconstruction possible from fly-bys and radioholograms. The detail's very poor, of course - ten kilometres at the best - but it's enough to give us the basic facts.

'Diameter - fifteen thousand kilometres, a little larger than Earth. A dense atmosphere - almost entirely nitrogen. And no oxygen - fortunately.'

That 'fortunately' was always an attention-getter; it made the audience sit up with a jolt.

'I understand your surprise; most human beings have a prejudice in favour of breathing. But in the decades before the Exodus, many things happened to change our outlook on the Universe.

'The absence of other living creatures - past or present - in the solar system and the failure of the SETI programs despite sixteen centuries of effort convinced virtually everyone that life must be very rare elsewhere in the universe, and therefore very precious.

'Hence it followed that all life forms were worthy of respect and should be cherished. Some argued that even virulent pathogens and disease vectors should not be exterminated, but should be preserved under strict safeguards. "Reverence for life" became a very popular phrase during the Last Days and few applied it exclusively to human life.

'Once the principle of biological noninterference was accepted, certain practical consequences followed. It had long been agreed that we should not attempt any settlement on a planet with intelligent life-forms; the human race had a bad enough record on its home world. Fortunately - or unfortunately! - this situation has never arisen.

'But the argument was taken further. Suppose we found a planet on which animal life had just begun. Should we stand aside and let evolution take its course on the chance that megayears hence intelligence might arise?

'Going still further back - suppose there was only plant life? Only single-cell microbes?

'You may find it surprising that, when the very existence of the human race was at stake, men bothered to debate such abstract moral and philosophical questions. But Death focuses the mind on the things that really matter: why are we here, and what should we do?

'The concept of "Metalaw" - I'm sure you've all heard the term - became very popular. Was it possible to develop legal and moral codes applicable to all intelligent creatures, and not merely to the bipedal, air-breathing mammals who had briefly dominated Planet Earth?

'Dr Kaldor, incidentally, was one of the leaders of the debate. It made him quite unpopular with those who argued that since H. sapiens was the only intelligent species known, its survival took precedence over all other considerations. Someone coined the effective slogan: "If it's Man or Slime Moulds, I vote for Man!"

'Fortunately, there's never been a direct confrontation - as far as we know. It may be centuries before we get reports from all the seedships that went out. And if some remain silent - well, the slime moulds may have won...

'In 3505, during the final session of the World Parliament, certain guidelines - the famous Geneva Directive - were laid down for future planetary colonization. Many thought that they were too idealistic, and there was certainly no way in which they could ever be enforced. But they were an expression of intent - a final gesture of goodwill towards a Universe which might never be able to appreciate it.

'Only one of the directive's guidelines concern us here - but it was the most celebrated and aroused intense controversy, since it ruled out some of the most promising targets.

'The presence of more than a few percent oxygen in a planet's atmosphere is definite proof that life exists there. The element is far too reactive to occur in the free state unless it is continually replenished by plants - or their equivalent. Of course, oxygen doesn't necessarily mean animal life, but it sets the stage for it. And even if animal life only rarely leads to intelligence, no other plausible route to it has ever been theorized.

'So, according to the principles of Metalaw, oxygen-bearing planets were placed out of bounds. Frankly, I doubt so drastic a decision would have been made if the quantum drive hadn't given us essentially unlimited range - and power.

'Now let me tell you our plan of operation, when we have reached Sagan 2. As you will see by the map, more than fifty per cent of the surface is ice-covered, to an estimated average depth of three kilometres. All the oxygen we shall ever need!

'When it's established its final orbit, Magellan will use the quantum drive, at a small fraction of full-power, to act as a torch. It will burn off the ice and simultaneously crack the steam into oxygen and hydrogen. The hydrogen will quickly leak away into space; we may help it with tuned lasers, if necessary.

'In only twenty years, Sagan 2 will have a ten per cent O₂ atmosphere, though it will be too full of nitrogen oxides and other poisons to be breathable. About that time we'll start dumping specially developed bacteria, and even plants, to accelerate the process. But the planet will still be far too cold; even allowing for the heat we've pumped into it, the temperature will be below freezing everywhere except for a few hours near noon at the Equator.

'So that's where we use the quantum drive, probably for the last time. Magellan, which has spent its entire existence in space, will finally descend to the surface of a planet.

'And then, for about fifteen minutes every day at the appropriate time, the drive will be switched on at the maximum power the structure of the ship - and the bedrock on which it is resting - can withstand. We won't know how long the operation will take until we have made the first tests; it may be necessary to move the ship again if the initial site is geologically unstable.

'At a first approximation, it appears that we'll need to operate the drive for thirty years, to slow the planet until it drops sunward far enough to give it a temperate climate. And we'll have to run the drive for another twenty-five years to circularize the orbit. But for much of that time Sagan 2 will be quite livable - though the winters will be fierce until final orbit is achieved.

'So then we will have a virgin planet, larger than Earth, with about forty percent ocean and a mean temperature of twenty-five degrees. The atmosphere will have an oxygen content seventy percent of Earth's - but still rising. It will be time to awaken the nine hundred thousand sleepers still in hibernation, and present them with a new world.

'That is the scenario unless unexpected developments - or discoveries - force us to depart from it. And if the worst comes to the worst ...'

Dr. Varley hesitated, then smiled grimly.

'No - whatever happens, you won't be seeing us again! If Sagan 2 is impossible, there is another target, thirty light-years farther on. It may be an even better one.

'Perhaps we will eventually colonize both. But that is for the future to decide.'

The discussion took a little time to get under way; most of the Academicians seemed stunned, though their applause was certainly genuine. The president, who through long experience always had a few questions prepared in advance, started the ball rolling.

'A trivial point, Dr. Varley - but who or what is Sagan 2 named after?'

'A writer of scientific romances, early Third Millennium.'

That broke the ice, just as the president had intended.

'You mentioned, Doctor, that Sagan 2 has at least one satellite. What will happen to it, when you change the planet's orbit?'

'Nothing, apart from very slight perturbations. It will move along with its primary.'

'If the directive of - what was it, 3500 -'

'3505.'

'- had been ratified earlier, would we be here now? I mean, Thalassa would have been out of bounds!'

'It's a very good question, and we've often debated it. The 2751 seeding mission - your Mother Ship on South Island - would certainly have gone against the directive. Luckily, the problem hasn't arisen. Since you have no land animals here, the principle of noninterference hasn't been violated.'

'This is very speculative,' one of the youngest of the Academicians said - to the obvious amusement of many of her elders. 'Granted that oxygen means life, how can you be sure that the reverse proposition is true? One can imagine all sorts of creatures - even intelligent ones - on planets with no oxygen, even with no atmosphere. If our evolutionary successors are intelligent machines, as many philosophers have suggested, they'd prefer an atmosphere in which they wouldn't rust. Have you any idea how old Sagan 2 is? It might have passed through the oxygen-biological era; there could be a machine civilization waiting for you there.'

There were a few groans from dissenters in the audience, and someone muttered 'science fiction!' in tones of disgust. Dr. Varley waited for the disturbance to die away, then answered briefly, 'We've not lost much sleep over that. And if we did run into a machine civilization, the principle of noninterference would hardly matter. I'd be much more worried about what it would do to ms than the other way round!'

A very old man - the oldest person Dr. Varley had seen in Thalassa - was slowly rising to his feet at the back of the room. The chairman scribbled a quick note and passed it over: 'Prof. Derek Winslade - 115 - GOM of T. science - historian.' Dr. Varley puzzled over GOM for a few seconds, before some mysterious flash of insight told her that it stood for 'Grand Old Man'.

And it would be typical, she thought, if the dean of Lassan science was a historian. In all their seven hundred years of history, the Three Islands had produced only a handful of original thinkers.

Yet this did not necessarily merit criticism. The Lassans had been forced to build up the infrastructure of civilization from zero; there had been little opportunity, or incentive, for any research that was not of direct practical application. And there was a more serious and subtle problem - that of population. At any one time, in any one scientific discipline, there would never be enough workers on Thalassa to reach 'critical mass' - the minimum number of reacting minds needed to ignite fundamental research into some new field of knowledge.

Only in mathematics - as in music - were there rare exceptions to this rule. A solitary genius - a Ramanujan or a Mozart - could arise from nowhere, and sail strange seas of thought alone. The famous example from Lassan science was Francis Zoltan (214-242); his name was still revered five hundred years later, but Dr. Varley had certain reservations even about his undoubted skills. No one, it seemed to her, had really understood his discoveries in the field of hypertransfinite numbers; still less extended them further - the true test of all genuine breakthroughs. Even now, his famous 'Last Hypothesis' defied either proof or disproof.

She suspected - though she was far too tactful to mention this to her Lassan friends - that Zoltan's tragically early death had exaggerated his reputation, investing his memory with wistful hopes of what might have been. The fact that he had disappeared while swimming off North Island had inspired legions of romantic myths and theories - disappointments in love, jealous rivals, inability to discover critical proofs, terror of the hyperinfinite itself - none of which had the slightest factual foundation. But they had all added to the popular image of Thalassa's greatest genius, cut down in the prime of his achievement.

What was the old professor saying? Oh, dear - there was always someone during the question period who brought up a totally irrelevant subject or seized the opportunity to expound a pet theory. Through long practice, Dr. Varley was quite good at dealing with such interpolators and could usually get a laugh at their expense. But she would have to be polite to a GOM, surrounded by respectful colleagues, on his own territory.

'Professor - ah - Winsdale' 'Winslade' the chairman whispered urgently, but she decided that any correction would only make matters worse, 'the question you have asked is a very good one but should really be the subject of another lecture. Or series of lectures; even then, it would barely scratch the subject.

'But to deal with your first point. We have heard that criticism several times - it is simply not true. We have made no attempt to keep the secret, as you call it, of the quantum drive. The complete theory is in the ship's Archives, and is among the material being transferred to your own.

'Having said that, I don't want to raise any false hopes. Frankly, there is no one in the ship's active crew who really understands the drive. We know how to use it - that's all.

'There are three scientists in hibernation who are supposed to be experts on the drive. If we have to wake them up before we reach Sagan 2, we'll be in really serious trouble.

'Men went insane trying to visualize the geometrodynamic structure of superspace, and asking why the universe originally had eleven dimensions instead of a nice number like ten or twelve. When I took the Propulsion Basics Course, my instructor said, "If you could understand the quantum drive, you wouldn't be here -you'd be up on Lagrange 1 at the Institute for Advanced Studies." And he gave me a useful comparison that helped me get to sleep again when I had nightmares trying to imagine what ten to the minus thirty three centimetres really means.

“Magellan's crew only has to know what the drive does,” my instructor told me. "They're like engineers in charge of an electric distribution network. As long as they know how to switch the power around, they don't have to know how it's generated. It may come from something simple, like an oil-fuelled dynamo or a solar panel or a water turbine. They would certainly understand the principles behind these - but they wouldn't need to in order to do their jobs perfectly well.

"Or the electricity might come from something more complex, like a fission reactor or a thermonuclear fusor or a muon catalyzer or a Penrose Node or a Hawking-Schwarzschild kernel - you see what I mean? Somewhere along the line they'd have to give up any hope of comprehension; but they'd still be perfectly competent engineers, capable of switching electric power where and when it was needed."

'In the same way, we can switch Magellan from Earth to Thalassa - and, I hope, on to Sagan 2 - without really knowing what we're doing. But one day, perhaps centuries hence, we will again be able to match the genius that produced the quantum drive.

'And - who knows? - you may do it first. Some latter-day Francis Zoltan may be born on Thalassa. And then perhaps you will come to visit us.'

She didn't really believe it. But it was a nice way to end, and it drew a tremendous round of applause.

 

22 Krakan

'We can do it with no trouble, of course,' said Captain Bey thoughtfully. 'Planning's essentially complete - that vibration problem with the compressors seems to be solved - site preparation is ahead of schedule. There's no doubt that we can spare the men and equipment - but is it really a good idea?' He looked at his five senior officers gathered around the oval table in the Terra Nova staff conference room; with one accord they all looked at Dr Kaldor, who sighed and spread his hands in resignation.

'So it's not a purely technical problem. Tell me all I have to know.'

'This is the situation,' Deputy Captain Malina said. The lights dimmed, and the Three Islands covered the table, floating a fraction of a centimetre above it like some beautifully detailed model. But this was no model, for if the scale was expanded enough, one could watch the Lassans going about their business.

'I think the Lassans are still scared of Mount Krakan, though really it's a very well behaved volcano - after all, it's never actually killed anyone! And it's the key to the interisland communications system. The summit is six kilometres above sea level - the highest point on the planet, of course. So it's the ideal site for an antenna park; all long-distance services are routed through here and beamed back to the two other islands.'

'It's always seemed a little odd to me,' Kaldor said mildly, 'that after two thousand years we've not found anything better than radio waves.'

'The Universe came equipped with only one electromagnetic spectrum, Dr Kaldor - we have to make the best use of it we can. And the Lassans are fortunate; because even the extreme ends of the North and South Islands are only three hundred kilometres apart, Mount Krakan can blanket them both. They can manage very nicely without comsats.

'The only problem is accessibility - and weather. The local joke is that Krakan's the only place on the planet that has any. Every few years someone has to climb the mountain, repair a few antennas, replace some solar cells and batteries - and shovel away a lot of snow. No real problem but a lot of hard work.'

'Which,' interjected Surgeon-Commander Newton, 'Lassans avoid whenever possible. Not that I blame them for saving their energies for more important things - like sports and athletics.'

She could have added 'making love', but that was already a sensitive subject with many of her colleagues, and the remark might not be appreciated.

'Why do they have to climb the mountain?' Kaldor asked. 'Why don't they just fly to the top? They've got vertical-lift aircraft.'

'Yes, but the air's thin up there - and what there is tends to be boisterous. After several bad accidents, the Lassans decided to do it the hard way.'

'I see,' Kaldor said thoughtfully. 'It's the old noninterference problem. Will we weaken their self-reliance? Only to a trivial extent, I'd say. And if we don't accede to such a modest request, we'd provoke resentment. Justified, too, considering the help they're giving us with the ice plant.'

'I feel exactly the same way. Any objections? Very good. Mister Lorenson - please make the arrangements. Use whichever spaceplane you think fit, as long as it's not needed for Operation Snowflake.'

Moses Kaldor had always loved mountains; they made him feel nearer to the God whose nonexistence he still sometimes resented.

From the rim of the great caldera, he could look down into a sea of lava, long since congealed but still emitting wisps of smoke from a dozen crevasses. Beyond that, far to the west, both the big islands were clearly visible, lying like dark clouds on the horizon.

The stinging cold and the need to make each breath count, added a zest to every moment. Long ago he had come across a phrase in some ancient travel or adventure book: 'Air like wine.' At the time he had wished he could ask the author just how much wine he'd breathed lately; but now the expression no longer seemed so ridiculous.

'Everything's unloaded, Moses. We're ready to fly back.'

'Thank you, Loren. I felt like waiting here until you collect everyone in the evening, but it might be risky to stay too long at this altitude."

'The engineers have brought oxygen bottles, of course,'

'I wasn't thinking only of that. My namesake once got into a lot of trouble on a mountain.'

'Sorry - I don't understand.'

'Never mind; it was a long, long time ago.'

As the spaceplane lifted off the rim of the crater, the work party waved cheerfully up at them. Now that all the tools and equipment had been unloaded, they were engaged in the essential preliminary to any Lassan project. Someone was making tea.

Loren was careful to avoid the complex mass of antennas, of practically every known design, as he climbed slowly up into the sky. They were all aimed towards the two islands dimly visible in the west; if he interrupted their multiple beams countless gigabytes of information would be irretrievably lost, and the Lassans would be sorry that they ever asked him to help.

'You're not heading towards Tarna?'

'In a minute. I want to look at the mountain first. Ah - there it is!'

'What?' Oh, I see. Krakan!'

The borrowed expletive was doubly appropriate. Beneath them, the ground had been split into a deep ravine about a hundred metres wide. And at the bottom of that ravine lay Hell.

The fires from the heart of this young world were still burning here, just below the surface. A glowing river of yellow, flecked with crimson, was moving sluggishly towards the sea. How could they be sure, Kaldor wondered, that the volcano had really settled down and was not merely biding its time?

But the river of lava was not their objective. Beyond it lay a small crater about a kilometre across, on the rim of which stood the stump of a single ruined tower. As they came closer, they could see that there had once been three such towers, equally spaced around the rim of the caldera, but of the other two only the foundations were left.

The floor of the crater was covered with a mass of tangled cables and metal sheets, obviously the remains of the great radio reflector that had once been suspended here. At its centre lay the wreckage of the receiving and transmitting equipment, partly submerged in a small lake formed by the frequent rainstorms over the mountain.

They circled the ruins of the last link with Earth, neither caring to intrude on the thoughts of the other. At last Loren broke the silence.

'It's a mess - but it wouldn't be hard to repair. Sagan 2 is only twelve degrees north - closer to the Equator than Earth was. Even easier to point the beam there with an offset antenna.'

'Excellent idea. When we've finished building our shield, we could help them get started. Not that they should need much help, for there's certainly no hurry. After all, it will be almost four centuries before they can hear from us again - even if we start transmitting just as soon as we arrive.'

Loren finished recording the scene, and prepared to fly down the slope of the mountain before turning towards South Island. He had descended scarcely a thousand metres when Kaldor said in a puzzled voice, 'What's that smoke over to the northeast? It looks like a signal.'

Halfway to the horizon, a thin white column was rising against the cloudless blue of the Thalassan sky. It had certainly not been there a few minutes before.

'Let's have a look. Perhaps there's a boat in trouble.'

'You know what it reminds me of?' said Kaldor.

Loren answered with a silent shrug.

'A spouting whale. When they came up to breathe, the big cetaceans used to blow out a column of water vapour. It looked very much like that.'

'There are two things wrong with your interesting theory,' Loren said. 'That column is now at least a kilometre high. Some whale!'

'Agreed. And whale spouts only lasted a few seconds - this is continuous. What's your second objection?'

'According to the chart, that's not open water. So much for the boat theory.'

'But that's ridiculous - Thalassa is all ocean - oh, I see. The Great Eastern Prairie. Yes - there's its edge. You'd almost imagine that was land down there.'

Coming swiftly towards them was the floating continent of seaborne vegetation which covered much of the Thalassan ocean and generated virtually all the oxygen in the planet's atmosphere. It was one continuous sheet of vivid - almost virulent - green and looked solid enough to walk upon. Only the complete absence of hills or any other change of elevation, revealed its true nature.

But in one region, about a kilometre across, the floating prairie was neither flat nor unbroken. Something was boiling beneath the surface, throwing up great clouds of steam and occasional masses of tangled weed.

'I should have remembered,' Kaldor said. 'Child of Krakan.'

'Of course,' Loren answered. 'That's the first time it's been active since we arrived. So this is how the islands were born.'

'Yes - the volcanic plume is moving steadily eastward. Perhaps in a few hundred years the Lassans will have a whole archipelago.'

They circled for another few minutes, then turned back towards East Island. To most spectators, this submarine volcano, still struggling to be born, would have been an awesome sight.

But not to men who had seen the destruction of a solar system.

 

23 Ice Day

The presidential yacht, alias Inter-Island Ferry Number 1, had certainly never looked so handsome at any previous stage of its three-centuries-long career. Not only was it festooned with bunting, but it had been given a new coat of white paint. Unfortunately, either paint or labour had become exhausted before the job was quite finished, so the captain had to be careful to anchor with only the starboard side visible from land.

President Farradine was also ceremonially attired in a striking outfit (designed by Mrs. President) that made him look like a cross between a Roman emperor and a pioneer astronaut. He did not appear altogether at ease in it; Captain Sirdar Bey was glad that his uniform consisted of the plain white shorts, open-neck shirt, shoulder badges, and gold-braided cap in which he felt completely at home - though it was hard to remember when he had last worn it.

Despite the president's tendency to trip over his toga, the official tour had gone very well, and the beautiful onboard model of the freezing plant had worked perfectly. It had produced an unlimited supply of hexagonal ice wafers just the right size to fit into a tumbler of cool drink. But the visitors could hardly be blamed for failing to understand the appropriateness of the name Snowflake; after all, few on Thalassa had ever seen snow.

And now they had left the model behind to inspect the real thing, which covered several hectares of the Tarna coastline. It had taken some time to shuttle the president and his entourage, Captain Bey and his officers, and all the other guests from yacht to shore. Now, in the last light of day, they were standing respectfully around the rim of a hexagonal block of ice twenty metres across and two metres thick. Not only was it the largest mass of frozen water that anyone had ever seen - it was probably the largest on the planet. Even at the Poles, ice seldom had a chance to form. With no major continents to block circulation, the rapidly moving currents from the equatorial regions quickly melted any incipient floes.

'But why is it that shape?' the president asked.

Deputy Captain Malina sighed; he was quite sure that this had already been explained several times.

'It's the old problem of covering any surface with identical tiles,' he said patiently. 'You have only three choices - squares, triangles, or hexagons. In our case, the hex is slightly more efficient and easier to handle. The blocks - over two hundred of them, each weighing six hundred tons - will be keyed into each other to build up the shield. It will be a kind of ice-sandwich three layers thick. When we accelerate, all the blocks will fuse together to make a single huge disk. Or a blunt cone, to be precise.'

'You've given me an idea.' The president was showing more animation than he had done all afternoon. 'We've never had ice-skating on Thalassa. It was a beautiful sport - and there was a game called ice-hockey, though I'm not sure I'd like to revive that, from the vids I've seen of it. But it would be wonderful if you could make us an ice-rink in time for the Olympics. Would that be possible?'

'I'll have to think about it,' Deputy Captain Malina replied, rather faintly. 'It's a very interesting idea. Perhaps you'll let me know how much ice you'd need.'

'I'll be delighted. And it will be an excellent way of using all this freezing plant when it's done its job.'

A sudden explosion saved Malina the necessity of a reply. The fireworks had started, and for the next twenty minutes the sky above the island erupted with polychromatic incandescence.

The Lassans loved fireworks and indulged in them at every opportunity. The display was intermingled with laser imagery -even more spectacular, and considerably safer, but lacking the smell of gunpowder that added that final touch of magic.

When all the festivities were over and the VIPs had departed to the ship, Deputy Captain Malina said thoughtfully, 'The president's full of surprises, even though he does have a one-track mind. I'm tired of hearing about his damned Olympics - but that ice-rink is an excellent idea and should generate a lot of goodwill for us.'

'I've won my bet, though,' Lieutenant Commander Lorenson said.

'What bet was that?' Captain Bey asked.

Malina gave a laugh.

'I would never have believed it. Sometimes the Lassans don't seem to have any curiosity - they take everything for granted. Though I suppose we should be flattered that they have such faith in our technological know-how. Perhaps they think we have antigravity!

'It was Loren's idea that I should leave it out of the briefing -and he was right. President Farradine never bothered to ask what would have been my very first question -just how we're going to lift a hundred and fifty thousand tons of ice up to Magellan.'

 

24 Archive

Moses Kaldor was happy to be left alone, for as many hours or days as he could be spared, in the cathedral calm of First Landing. He felt like a young student again, confronted with all the art and knowledge of mankind. The experience was both exhilarating and depressing; a whole universe lay at his fingertips, but the fraction of it he could explore in an entire lifetime was so negligible that he was sometimes almost overwhelmed with despair. He was like a hungry man presented with a banquet that stretched as far as the eye could see - a feast so staggering that it completely destroyed his appetite.

And yet all this wealth of wisdom and culture was only a tiny fraction of mankind's heritage; much that Moses Kaldor knew and loved was missing - not, he was well aware, by accident but by deliberate design.

A thousand years ago, men of genius and goodwill had rewritten history and gone through the libraries of Earth deciding what should be saved and what should be abandoned to the flames. The criterion of choice was simple though often very hard to apply. Only if it would contribute to survival and social stability on the new worlds would any work of literature, any record of the past, be loaded into the memory of the seedships.

The task was, of course, impossible as well as heartbreaking. With tears in their eyes, the selection panels had thrown away the Veda, the Bible, the Tripitaka, the Qur'an, and all the immense body of literature - fiction and nonfiction - that was based upon them. Despite all the wealth of beauty and wisdom these works contained, they could not be allowed to reinfect virgin planets with the ancient poisons of religious hatred, belief in the supernatural, and the pious gibberish with which countless billions of men and women had once comforted themselves at the cost of addling their minds.

Lost also in the great purge were virtually all the works of the supreme novelists, poets, and playwrights, which would in any case have been meaningless without their philosophical and cultural background. Homer, Shakespeare, Milton, Tolstoy, Melville, Proust - the last great fiction writer before the electronic revolution overwhelmed the printed page - all that was left were a few hundred thousand carefully selected passages. Excluded was everything that concerned war, crime, violence, and the destructive passions. If the newly designed - and it was hoped improved - successors to H. sapiens rediscovered these, they would doubtless create their own literature in response. There was no need to give them premature encouragement.

Music - except for opera - had fared better, as had the visual arts. Nevertheless, the sheer volume of material was so overwhelming that selection had been imperative, though sometimes arbitrary. Future generations on many worlds would wonder about Mozart's first thirty-eight symphonies, Beethoven's Second and Fourth, and Sibelius's Third to Sixth.

Moses Kaldor was deeply aware of his responsibility, and also conscious of his inadequacy - of any one man's inadequacy, however talented he might be - to handle the task that confronted him. Up there aboard Magellan, safely stored in its gigantic memory banks, was much that the people of Thalassa had never known and certainly much that they would greedily accept and enjoy, even if they did not wholly understand. The superb twenty-fifth century recreation of the Odyssey, the war classics that looked back in anguish across half a millennium of peace, the great Shakespearean tragedies in Feinberg's miraculous Lingua translation, Lee Chow's War and Peace - it would take hours and days even to name all the possibilities.

Sometimes, as he sat in the library of the First Landing Complex, Kaldor was tempted to play god with these reasonably happy and far-from-innocent people. He would compare the listings from the memory banks here with those aboard the ship, noting what had been expunged or condensed. Even though he disagreed in principle with any form of censorship, often he had to admit the wisdom of the deletions - at least in the days when the colony was founded. But now that it was successfully established, perhaps a little disturbance, or injection of creativity, might be in order ...

Occasionally, he was disturbed himself either by calls from the ship or by parties of young Lassans being given guided tours back to the beginning of their history. He did not mind the interruptions, and there was one that he positively welcomed.

Most afternoons, except when what passed for urgent business in Tarna prevented her, Mirissa would come riding up the hill on her beautiful palomino gelding, Bobby. The visitors had been much surprised to find horses on Thalassa, since they had never seen any alive on Earth. But the Lassans loved animals, and had recreated many from the vast files of genetic material they had inherited. Sometimes they were quite useless - or even a nuisance, like the engaging little squirrel monkeys that were always stealing small objects from Tarnan households.

Mirissa would invariably bring some delicacy - usually fruit or one of the many local cheeses - which Kaldor would accept with gratitude. But he was even more grateful for her company; who would believe that often he had addressed five million people -more than half the last generation! - yet was now content with an audience of one ...

'Because you've descended from a long line of librarians," Moses Kaldor said, 'you only think in megabytes. But may I remind you that the name "library" comes from a word meaning book. Do you have books on Thalassa?'

'Of course we do,' Mirissa said indignantly; she had not yet learned to tell when Kaldor was joking. 'Millions ... well, thousands. There's a man on North Island who prints about ten a year, in editions of a few hundred. They're beautiful - and very expensive. They all go as gifts for special occasions. I had one on my twenty-first birthday - Alice in Wonderland.'

'I'd like to see it someday. I've always loved books, and have almost a hundred on the ship. Perhaps that's why whenever I hear someone talking bytes, I divide mentally by a million and think of one book ... one gigabyte equals a thousand books, and so on. That's the only way I can grasp what's really involved when people talk about data banks and information transfer. Now, how big is your library?'

Without taking her eyes off Kaldor, Mirissa let her fingers wander over the keyboard of her console.

'That's another thing I've never been able to do,' he said admiringly. 'Someone once said that after the twenty-first century, the human race divided into two species - Verbals and Digitals. I can use a keyboard when I have to, of course - but I prefer to talk to my electronic colleagues.'

'As of the last hourly check,' Mirissa said, 'six hundred and forty-five terabytes.'

'Um - almost a billion books. And what was the initial size of the library?'

'I can tell you that without looking it up. Six hundred and forty.'

'So in seven hundred years -

'Yes, yes - we've managed to produce only a few million books.'

'I'm not criticizing; after all, quality is far more important than quantity. I'd like you to show me what you consider the best works of Lassan literature - music, too. The problem we have to decide is what to give you. Magellan has over a thousand megabooks aboard, in the General Access bank. Do you realize just what that implies?'

'If I said "Yes", it would stop you from telling me. I'm not that cruel.'

'Thank you, my dear. Seriously, it's a terrifying problem that's haunted me for years. Sometimes I think that the Earth was destroyed none too soon; the human race was being crushed by the information it was generating.

'At the end of the Second Millennium, it was producing only -only! - the equivalent of a million books a year. And I'm referring merely to information that was presumed to be of some permanent value, so it was stored indefinitely.

'By the Third Millennium, the figure had multiplied by at least a hundred. Since writing was invented, until the end of Earth, it's been estimated that ten thousand million books were produced. And as I told you, we have about ten per cent of that on board.

'If we dumped it all on you, even assuming you have the storage capacity, you'd be overwhelmed. It would be no kindness - it would totally inhibit your cultural and scientific growth. And most of the material would mean nothing at all to you; you'd take centuries to sort the wheat from the chaff

Strange, Kaldor said to himself, that I've not thought of the analogy before. This is precisely the danger that the opponents of SETI kept raising. Well, we never communicated with extraterrestrial intelligence, or even detected it. But the Lassans have done just that - and the ETs are us ...

Yet despite their totally different backgrounds, he and Mirissa had so much in common. Her curiosity and intelligence were traits to be encouraged; not even among his fellow crew members was there anyone with whom he could have such stimulating conversations. Sometimes Kaldor was so hard put to answer her questions that the only defence was a counterattack.

'I'm surprised,' he told her after a particularly thorough cross-examination on Solar politics, 'that you never took over from your father and worked here full-time. This would be the perfect job for you.'

'I was tempted. But he spent all his life answering other people's questions and assembling files for the bureaucrats on North Island. He never had time to do anything himself.'

'And you?'

'I like collecting facts, but I also like to see them used. That's why they made me deputy director of the Tarna Development Project.'

'Which I fear may have been slightly sabotaged by our operations. Or so the director told me when I met him coming out of the mayor's office.'

'You know Brant wasn't serious. It's a long-range plan, with only approximate completion dates. If the Olympic Ice Stadium is built here, then the project may have to be modified - for the better, most of us believe. Of course, the Northers want to have it on their side - they think that First Landing is quite enough for us.'

Kaldor chuckled; he knew all about the generations-old rivalry between the two islands.

'Well - isn't it? Especially now that you have us as an additional attraction. You mustn't be too greedy.'

They had grown to know - and like - each other so well that they could joke about Thalassa or Magellan with equal impartiality. And there were no longer any secrets between them; they could talk frankly about Loren and Brant, and at last Moses Kaldor found he could speak of Earth.

'... Oh, I've lost count of my various jobs, Mirissa - most of them weren't very important, anyway. The one I held longest was Professor of Political Science in Cambridge, Mars. And you can't imagine the confusion that caused, because there was an older university at a place called Cambridge, Mass - and a still older one in Cambridge, England.

'But towards the end, Evelyn and I got more and more involved in the immediate social problems, and the planning for the Final Exodus. It seemed that I had some - well, oratorical talent - and could help people face what future was left to them.

'Yet we never really believed that the End would be in our time - who could! And if anyone had ever told me that I should leave Earth and everything I loved...'

A spasm of emotion crossed his face, and Mirissa waited in sympathetic silence until he had regained his composure. There were so many questions she wanted to ask that it might take a lifetime to answer them all; and she had only a year before Magellan set forth once more for the stars.

'When they told me I was needed, I used all my philosophical and debating skills to prove them wrong. I was too old; all the knowledge I had was stored in the memory banks; other men could do a better job ... everything except the real reason.

'In the end, Evelyn made up my mind for me; it's true, Mirissa, that in some ways women are much stronger than men - but why am I telling you that?

' "They need you," said her last message. "We have spent forty years together - now there is only a month left. Go with my love. Do not try to find me."

'I shall never know if she saw the end of the Earth as I did -when we were leaving the solar system.'

 

25 Scorp

He had seen Brant stripped before, when they had gone on that memorable boat-ride, but had never realized how formidably muscled the younger man was. Though Loren had always taken good care of his body, there had been little opportunity for sport or exercise since leaving Earth. Brant, however, was probably involved in some heavy physical exertion every day of his life -and it showed. Loren would have absolutely no chance against him unless he could conjure up one of the reputed martial arts of old Earth - none of which he had ever known.

The whole thing was perfectly ridiculous. There were his fellow officers grinning their stupid heads off. There was Captain Bey holding a stopwatch. And there was Mirissa with an expression that could only be described as smug.

'... two ... one ... zero ... GO!' said the captain. Brant moved like a striking cobra. Loren tried to avoid the onslaught but discovered to his horror that he had no control over his body. Time seemed to have slowed down ... his legs were made of lead and refused to obey him ... he was about to lose not only Mirissa but his very manhood ...

At that point, luckily, he had woken up, but the dream still bothered him. Its sources were obvious, but that did not make it any the less disturbing. He wondered if he should tell it to Mirissa.

Certainly he could never tell it to Brant, who was still perfectly friendly but whose company he now found embarrassing. Today, however, he positively welcomed it; if he was right, they were now confronted with something very much greater than their own private affairs.

He could hardly wait to see the reaction when Brant met the unexpected visitor who had arrived during the night.

The concrete-lined channel that brought seawater into the freezing plant was a hundred metres long and ended in a circular pool holding just enough water for one snowflake. Since pure ice was an indifferent building material, it was necessary to strengthen it, and the long strands of kelp from the Great Eastern Prairie made a cheap and convenient reinforcement. The frozen composite had been nicknamed icecrete and was guaranteed not to flow, glacierlike, during the weeks and months of Magellan's acceleration.

'There it is.' Loren stood with Brant Falconer at the edge of the pool, looking down through a break in the matted raft of marine vegetation. The creature eating the kelp was built on the same general plan as a terrestrial lobster - but was more than twice the size of a man.

'Have you ever seen anything like that before?'

'No,' Brant answered fervently, 'and I'm not at all sorry. What a monster! How did you catch it?'

'We didn't. It swam - or crawled - in from the sea, along the channel. Then it found the kelp and decided to have a free lunch.'

'No wonder it has pinchers like that; those stems are really tough.'

'Well, at least it's a vegetarian.'

'I'm not sure I'd care to put that to the test.'

'I was hoping you could tell us something about it.'

'We don't know a hundredth of the creatures in the Lassan sea. One day we'll build some research subs and go into deep water. But there are so many other priorities, and not enough people are interested.'

They soon will be, Lorenson thought grimly. Let's see how long Brant takes to notice for himself...

'Science Officer Varley has been checking the records. She tells me that there was something very much like this on Earth millions of years ago. The paleontologists gave it a good name - sea scorpion. Those ancient oceans must have been exciting places.'

'Just the sort of thing Kumar would like to chase,' Brant said. 'What are you going to do with it?'

'Study it and then let it go.'

'I see you've already tagged it.'

So Brant's noticed, thought Loren. Good for him.

'No - we haven't. Look more carefully.'

There was a puzzled expression on Brant's face as he knelt at the side of the tank. The giant scorpion ignored him completely as it continued to snip away at the seaweed with its formidable pinchers.

One of those pinchers was not altogether as nature had designed it. At the hinge of the right-hand claw there was a loop of wire twisted round several times like a crude bracelet.

Brant recognized that wire. His jaw dropped, and for a moment he was at a loss for words.

'So I guessed right,' Lorenson said. 'Now you know what happened to your fish trap. I think we'd better talk to Dr. Varley again - not to mention your own scientists.'

'I'm an astronomer,' Anne Varley had protested from her office aboard Magellan. 'What you need is a combination of zoologist, paleontologist, ethologist - not to mention a few other disciplines. But I've done my best to set up a search program, and you'll find the result dumped in your Bank 2 under file heading SCORP. Now all you need to do is to search that - and good luck to you.'

Despite her disclaimer, Dr. Varley had done her usual efficient job of winnowing through the almost-infinite store of knowledge in the ship's main memory banks. A pattern was beginning to emerge; meanwhile, the source of all the attention still browsed peacefully in its tank, taking no notice of the continual flow of visitors who came to study or merely to gape.

Despite its terrifying appearance - those pinchers were almost half a metre long and looked capable of taking off a man's head with one neat snip - the creature seemed completely nonaggressive. It made no effort to escape, perhaps because it had found such an abundant source of food. Indeed, it was generally believed that some trace chemical from the kelp had been responsible for luring it here.

If it was able to swim, it showed no inclination to do so, but was content to crawl around on its six stubby legs. Its four-metre long body was encased in a vividly coloured exoskeleton, articulated to give it surprising flexibility.

Another remarkable feature was the fringe of palps, or small tentacles, surrounding the beaklike mouth. They bore a striking -indeed, uncomfortable - resemblance to stubby human fingers and seemed equally dexterous. Although handling food appeared to be their main function, they were clearly capable of much more, and it was fascinating to watch the way that the scorp used them in conjunction with its claws.

Its two sets of eyes - one pair large, and apparently intended for low light, since during the daytime they were kept closed - must also provide it with excellent vision. Altogether, it was superbly equipped to survey and to manipulate its environment - the prime requirements for intelligence.

Yet no one would have suspected intelligence in such a bizarre creature if not for the wire twisted purposefully around its right claw. That, however, proved nothing. As the records showed, there had been animals on Earth who collected foreign objects -often man-made - and used them in extraordinary ways.

If it had not been fully documented, no one would have believed the Australian bowerbird's, or the North American pack rat's, mania for collecting shiny or coloured objects, and even arranging them in artistic displays. Earth had been full of such mysteries, which now would never be solved. Perhaps the Thalassan scorp was merely following the same mindless tradition, and for equally inscrutable reasons.

There were several theories. The most popular - because it put the least demands on the scorp's mentality - was that the wire bracelet was merely an ornament. Fixing it in place must have required some dexterity, and there was a good deal of debate as to whether the creature could have done it without assistance.

That assistance, of course, could have been human. Perhaps the scorp was some eccentric scientist's escaped pet, but this seemed very improbable. Since everyone on Thalassa knew everyone else, such a secret could not have been kept for long.

There was one other theory, the most farfetched of all - yet the most thought provoking.

Perhaps the bracelet was a badge of rank.

 

26 Snowflake Rising

It was highly skilled work with long periods of boredom, which gave Lieutenant Owen Fletcher plenty of time to think. Far too much time, in fact.

He was an angler, reeling in a six-hundred-ton catch on a line of almost unimaginable strength. Once a day the self-guided, captive probe would dive down towards Thalassa, spinning out the cable behind it along a complex, thirty-thousand-kilometre curve. It would home automatically on to the waiting payload, and when all the checks had been completed, the hoisting would begin.

The critical moments were at lift-off, when the snowflake was snatched out of the freezing plant, and the final approach to Magellan, when the huge hexagon of ice had to be brought to rest only a kilometre from the ship. Lifting began at midnight, and from Tarna to the stationary orbit in which Magellan was hovering, took just under six hours.

If Magellan was in daylight during the rendezvous and assembly, the first priority was keeping the snowflake in shadow, lest the fierce rays of Thalassa's sun boil off the precious cargo into space. Once it was safely behind the big radiation shield, the claws of the robot teleoperators could rip away the insulating foil that had protected the ice during its ascent to orbit.

Next the lifting cradle had to be removed, to be sent back for another load. Sometimes the huge metal plate, shaped like a hexagonal saucepan lid designed by some eccentric cook, stuck to the ice, and a little carefully regulated heating was required to detach it.

At last, the geometrically perfect ice floe would be poised motionless a hundred metres away from Magellan, and the really tricky part would begin. The combination of six hundred tons of mass with zero weight was utterly outside the range of human instinctive reactions; only computers could tell what thrusts were needed, in what direction, at what moments of time, to key the artificial iceberg into position. But there was always the possibility of some emergency or unexpected problem beyond the capabilities of even the most intelligent robot; although Fletcher had not yet had to intervene, he would be ready if the time came.

I'm helping to build, he told himself, a giant honeycomb of ice. The first layer of the comb was now almost completed, and there were two more to go. Barring accidents, the shield would be finished in another hundred and fifty days. It would be tested under low acceleration, to make sure that all the blocks had fused together properly; and then Magellan would set forth upon the final leg of its journey to the stars.

Fletcher was still doing his job conscientiously - but with his mind, not with his heart. That was already lost to Thalassa.

He had been born on Mars, and this world had everything his own barren planet had lacked. He had seen the labour of generations of his ancestors dissolve in flame; why start again centuries from now on yet another world - when Paradise was here?

And, of course, a girl was waiting for him, down there on South Island ...

He had almost decided that when the time came, he would jump ship. The Terrans could go on without him, to deploy their strength and skills - and perhaps break their hearts and bodies -against the stubborn rocks of Sagan 2. He wished them luck; when he had done his duty, his home was here.

Thirty thousand kilometres below, Brant Falconer had also made a crucial decision.

'I'm going to North Island.'

Mirissa lay silent; then, after what seemed to Brant a very long time, she said, 'Why?' There was no surprise, no regret in her voice; so much, he thought, has changed.

But before he could answer, she added, 'You don't like it there.'

'Perhaps it is better than here - as things are now. This is no longer my home.'

'It will always be your home.'

'Not while Magellan is still in orbit.'

Mirissa reached out her hand in the darkness to the stranger beside her. At least he did not move away.

'Brant,' she said, 'I never intended this. And nor, I'm quite certain, did Loren.'

'That doesn't help much, does it? Frankly, I can't understand what you see in him.'

Mirissa almost smiled. How many men, she wondered, had said that to how many women in the course of human history? And how many women had said, 'What can you see in her?'

There was no way of answering, of course; even the attempt would only make matters worse. But sometimes she had tried, for her own satisfaction, to pinpoint what had drawn her and Loren together since the very moment they had first set eyes upon each other.

The major part was the mysterious chemistry of love, beyond rational analysis, inexplicable to anyone who did not share the same illusion. But there were other elements that could be clearly identified and explained in logical terms. It was useful to know what they were; one day (all too soon!) that wisdom might help her face the moment of parting.

First there was the tragic glamour that surrounded all the Terrans; she did not discount the importance of that, but Loren shared it with all his comrades. What did he have that was so special and that she could not find in Brant?

As lovers, there was little to choose between them; perhaps Loren was more imaginative, Brant more passionate - though had he not become a little perfunctory in the last few weeks? She would be perfectly happy with either. No, it was not that ...

Perhaps she was searching for an ingredient that did not even exist. There was no single element but an entire constellation of qualities. Her instincts, below the level of conscious thought, had added up the score; and Loren had come out a few points ahead of Brant. It could be as simple as that.

There was certainly one respect in which Loren far eclipsed Brant. He had drive, ambition - the very things that were so rare on Thalassa. Doubtless he had been chosen for these qualities; he would need them in the centuries to come.

Brant had no ambition whatsoever, though he was not lacking in enterprise; his still-uncompleted fish-trapping project was proof of that. All he asked from the Universe was that it provided him with interesting machines to play with; Mirissa sometimes thought that he included her in that category.

Loren, by contrast, was in the tradition of the great explorers and adventurers. He would help to make history, not merely submit to its imperatives. And yet he could - not often enough but more and more frequently - be warm and human. Even as he froze the seas of Thalassa, his own heart was beginning to thaw.

'What are you going to do on North Island?' Mirissa whispered. Already, they had taken his decision for granted.

'They want me there to help fit out Calypso. The Northers don't really understand the sea.'

Mirissa felt relieved; Brant was not simply running away - he had work to do.

Work that would help him to forget - until, perhaps, the time came to remember once again.

 

27 Mirror of the Past

Moses Kaldor held the module up to the light, peering into it as if he could read its contents.

'It will always seem a miracle to me,' he said, 'that I can hold a million books between my thumb and forefinger. I wonder what Caxton and Gutenberg would have thought.'

'Who?' Mirissa asked.

'The men who started the human race reading. But there's a price we have to pay now for our ingenuity. Sometimes I have a little nightmare and imagine that one of these modules contains some piece of absolutely vital information - say the cure for a raging epidemic - but the address has been lost. It's on one of those billion pages, but we don't know which. How frustrating to hold the answer in the palm of your hand and not be able to find it!'

'I don't see the problem,' the captain's secretary said. As an expert on information storage and retrieval, Joan LeRoy had been helping with the transfers between Thalassa Archives and the ship. 'You'll know the key words; all you have to do is set up a search program. Even a billion pages could be checked in a few seconds.'

'You've spoiled my nightmare.' Kaldor sighed. Then he brightened. 'But often you even don't know the key words. How many times have you come across something that you didn't know you needed - until you found it?'

'Then you're badly organized,' said Lieutenant LeRoy.

They enjoyed these little tongue-in-cheek exchanges, and Mirissa was not always sure when to take them seriously. Joan and Moses did not deliberately try to exclude her from their conversations, but their worlds of experience were so utterly different from hers that she sometimes felt that she was listening to a dialogue in an unknown language.

'Anyway, that completes the Master Index. We each know what the other has; now we merely - merely! - have to decide what we'd like to transfer. It may be inconvenient, not to say expensive, when we're seventy-five lights apart.'

'Which reminds me,' Mirissa said. 'I don't suppose I should tell you - but there was a delegation from North Island here last week. The president of the science academy, and a couple of physicists.'

'Let me guess. The quantum drive.'

'Right.'

'How did they react?'

'They seemed pleased - and surprised - that it really was there. They made a copy, of course.'

'Good luck to them; they'll need it. And you might tell them this. Someone once said that the QD's real purpose is nothing as trivial as the exploration of the Universe. We'll need its energies one day to stop the cosmos' collapsing back into the primordial Black Hole - and to start the next cycle of existence.'

There was an awed silence, then Joan LeRoy broke the spell.

'Not in the lifetime of this administration. Let's get back to work. We still have megabytes to go, before we sleep.'

It was not all work, and there were times when Kaldor simply had to get away from the Library Section of First Landing in order to relax. Then he would stroll across to the art gallery, take the computer-guided tour through the Mother Ship (never the same route twice - he tried to cover as much ground as possible) or let the Museum carry him back in time.

There was always a long line of visitors - mostly students, or children with their parents - for the Terrama displays. Sometimes Moses Kaldor felt a little guilty at using his privileged status to jump to the head of the queue. He consoled himself with the thought that the Lassans had a whole lifetime in which they could enjoy these panoramas of the world they had never known; he had only months in which to revisit his lost home.

He found it very difficult to convince his new friends that Moses Kaldor had never been in the scenes they sometimes watched together. Everything they saw was at least eight hundred years in his own past, for the Mother Ship had left Earth in 2751 - and he had been born in 3541. Yet occasionally there would be a shock of recognition, and some memory would come flooding back with almost unbearable power.

The 'Sidewalk Cafe' presentation was the most uncanny, and the most evocative. He would be sitting at a small table, under an awning, drinking wine or coffee, while the life of a city flowed past him. As long as he did not get up from the table, there was absolutely no way in which his senses could distinguish the display from reality.

In microcosm, the great cities of Earth were brought back to life. Rome, Paris, London, New York - in summer and winter, by night and day, he watched the tourists and businessmen and students and lovers go about their ways. Often, realizing that they were being recorded, they would smile at him across the centuries, and it was impossible not to respond.

Other panoramas showed no human beings at all, or even any of the productions of Man. Moses Kaldor looked again, as he had done in that other life, upon the descending smoke of Victoria Falls, the Moon rising above the Grand Canyon, the Himalayan snows, the ice cliffs of Antarctica. Unlike the glimpses of the cities, these things had not changed in the thousand years since they were recorded. And though they had existed long before Man, they had not outlasted him.

 

28 The Sunken Forest

The scorp did not seem to be in a hurry; it took a leisurely ten days to travel fifty kilometres. One curious fact was quickly revealed by the sonar beacon that had been attached, not without difficulty, to the angry subject's carapace. The path it traced along the seabed was perfectly straight, as if it knew precisely where it was going.

Whatever its destination might be, it seemed to have found it, at a depth of two hundred and fifty metres. Thereafter, it still kept moving around, but inside a very limited area. This continued for two more days; then the signals from the ultrasonic pinger suddenly stopped in mid-pulse.

That the scorp had been eaten by something even bigger and nastier than itself was far too naive an explanation. The pinger was enclosed in a tough metal cylinder; any conceivable arrangement of teeth, claws, or tentacles would take minutes - at the very least - to demolish it, and it would continue to function quite happily inside any creature that swallowed it whole.

This left only two possibilities, and the first was indignantly denied by the staff of the North Island Underwater Lab.

'Every single component had a back-up,' the director said. 'What's more, there was a diagnostic pulse only two seconds earlier; everything was normal. So it could not have been an equipment failure.'

That left only the impossible explanation. The pinger had been switched off. And to do that, a locking-bar had to be removed.

It could not happen by accident; only by curious meddling – or deliberate intent.

* * *

The twenty metre twin-hull Calypso was not merely the largest, but the only, oceanographic research vessel on Thalassa. It was normally based on North Island, and Loren was amused to note the good-natured banter between its scientific crew and their Tarnan passengers, whom they pretended to treat as ignorant fishermen. For their part, the South Islanders lost no opportunity of boasting to the Northers that they were the ones who had discovered the scorps. Loren did not remind them that this was not strictly in accord with the facts.

It was a slight shock to meet Brant again, though Loren should have expected it, since the other had been partly responsible for Calypso's new equipment. They greeted each other with cool politeness, ignoring the curious or amused glances of the other passengers. There were few secrets on Thalassa; by this time everyone would know who was occupying the main guest-room of the Leonidas home.

The small underwater sledge sitting on the afterdeck would have been familiar to any oceanographer of the last two thousand years. Its metal framework carried three television cameras, a wire basket to hold samples collected by the remote-controlled arm, and an arrangement of water-jets that permitted movement in any direction. Once it had been lowered over the side, the robot explorer could send its images and information back through a fibre-optic cable not much thicker than the lead of a pencil. The technology was centuries old - and still perfectly adequate.

Now the shoreline had finally disappeared, and for the first time Loren found himself completely surrounded by water. He recalled his anxiety on that earlier trip with Brant and Kumar when they had travelled hardly a kilometre from the beach. This time, he was pleased to discover, he felt slightly more at ease, despite the presence of his rival. Perhaps it was because he was on a much larger boat ...

'That's odd,' Brant said, 'I've never seen kelp this far to the west.'

At first Loren could see nothing; then he noticed the dark stain low in the water ahead. A few minutes later, the boat was nosing its way through a loose mass of floating vegetation, and the captain slowed speed to a crawl.

'We're almost there, anyway,' he said. 'No point in clogging our intakes with this stuff. Agreed, Brant?'

Brant adjusted the cursor on the display screen and took a reading.

'Yes - we're only fifty metres from where we lost the pinger. Depth two hundred and ten. Let's get the fish overboard.'

'Just a minute,' one of the Norther scientists said. 'We spent a lot of time and money on that machine, and it's the only one in the world. Suppose it gets tangled up in that damned kelp?"

There was a thoughtful silence; then Kumar, who had been uncharacteristically quiet - perhaps overawed by the high-powered talent from North Island - put in a diffident word.

'It looks much worse from here. Ten metres down, there are almost no leaves - only the big stems, with plenty of room between them. It's like a forest.'

Yes, thought Loren, a submarine forest, with fish swimming between the slender, sinuous trunks. While the other scientists were watching the main video screen and the multiple displays of instrumentation, he had put on a set of full-vision goggles, excluding everything from his field of view except the scene ahead of the slowly descending robot. Psychologically, he was no longer on the deck of Calypso; the voices of his companions seemed to come from another world that had nothing to do with him.

He was an explorer entering an alien universe, not knowing what he might encounter. It was a restricted, almost monochrome universe; the only colours were soft blues and greens, and the limit of vision was less than thirty metres away. At any one time he could see a dozen slender trunks, supported at regular intervals by the gas-filled bladders that gave them buoyancy, reaching up from the gloomy depths and disappearing into the luminous 'sky' overhead. Sometimes he felt that he was walking through a grove of trees on a dull, foggy day: then a school of darting fish destroyed the illusion.

'Two hundred fifty metres,' he heard someone call. 'We should see the bottom soon. Shall we use the lights? The image quality is deteriorating.'

Loren had scarcely noticed any change, because the automatic controls had maintained the picture brilliance. But he realized that it must be almost completely dark at this depth; a human eye would have been virtually useless.

'No - we don't want to disturb anything until we have to. As long as the camera's operating, let's stick to available light.'

'There's the bottom! Mostly rock - not much sand.'

'Naturally. Macrocystis thalassi needs rocks to cling to - it's not like the free-floating Sargassum.'

Loren could see what the speaker meant. The slender trunks ended in a network of roots, grasping rock-outcroppings so firmly that no storms or surface currents could dislodge them. The analogy with a forest on land was even closer than he had thought.

Very cautiously, the robot surveyor was working its way into the submarine forest, playing out its cable behind it. There seemed no risk of becoming entangled in the serpentine trunks that reared up to the invisible surface, for there was plenty of space between the giant plants. Indeed, they might have been deliberately -

The scientists looking at the monitor screen realized the incredible truth just a few seconds after Loren.

'Krakan!' one of them whispered. 'This isn't a natural forest -it's a - plantation?

 

29 Sabra

They called themselves Sabras, after the pioneers who, a millennium and a half before, had tamed an almost equally hostile wilderness on Earth.

The Martian Sabras had been lucky in one respect; they had no human enemies to oppose them - only the fierce climate, the barely perceptible atmosphere, the planet-wide sandstorms. All these handicaps they had conquered; they were fond of saying that they had not merely survived, they had prevailed. That quotation was only one of countless borrowings from Earth, which their fierce independence would seldom allow them to acknowledge.

For more than a thousand years, they had lived in the shadow of an illusion - almost a religion. And, like any religion, it had -performed an essential role in their society; it had given them goals beyond themselves, and a purpose to their lives.

Until the calculations proved otherwise, they had believed - or at least hoped - that Mars might escape the doom of Earth. It would be a close thing, of course; the extra distance would merely reduce the radiation by fifty per cent - but that might be sufficient. Protected by the kilometres of ancient ice at the Poles, perhaps Martians could survive when Men could not. There had even been a fantasy - though only a few romantics had really believed it - that the melting of the polar caps would restore the planet's lost oceans. And then, perhaps, the atmosphere might become dense enough for men to move freely in the open with simple breathing equipment and thermal insulation ...

These hopes died hard, killed at last by implacable equations. No amount of skill or effort would allow the Sabras to save themselves. They, too, would perish with the mother world whose softness they often affected to despise.

Yet now, spread beneath Magellan, was a planet that epitomized all the hopes and dreams of the last generations of Martian colonists. As Owen Fletcher looked down at the endless oceans of Thalassa, one thought kept hammering in his brain.

According to the star-probes, Sagan Two was much like Mars - which was the very reason he and his compatriots had been selected for this voyage. But why resume a battle, three hundred years hence and seventy-five light-years away, when Victory was already here and now?

Fletcher was no longer thinking merely of desertion; that would mean leaving far too much behind. It would be easy enough to hide on Thalassa; but how would he feel, when Magellan left, with the last friends and colleagues of his youth?

Twelve Sabras were still in hibernation. Of the five awake, he had already cautiously sounded out two and had received a favourable response. And if the other two also agreed with him, he knew that they could speak for the sleeping dozen.

Magellan must end its starfaring, here at Thalassa.

 

30 Child of Krakan

There was little conversation aboard as Calypso headed back towards Tarna at a modest twenty klicks; her passengers were lost in their thoughts, brooding over the implications of those images from the seabed. And Loren was still cut off from the outside world; he had kept on the full-view goggles and was playing back yet again the underwater sledge's exploration of the submarine forest.

Spinning out its cable like a mechanical spider, the robot had moved slowly through the great trunks, which looked slender because of their enormous length but were actually thicker than a man's body. It was now obvious that they were ranged in regular columns and rows, so no one was really surprised when they came to a clearly defined end. And there, going about their business in their jungle encampment, were the scorps.

It had been wise not to switch on the floodlights; the creatures were completely unaware of the silent observer floating in the near-darkness only metres overhead. Loren had seen videos of ants, bees, and termites, and the way in which the scorps were functioning reminded him of these. At first sight, it was impossible to believe that such intricate organization could exist without a controlling intelligence - yet their behaviour might be entirely automatic, as in the case of Earth's social insects.

Some scorps were tending the great trunks that soared up towards the surface to harvest the rays of the invisible sun; others were scuttling along the seabed carrying rocks, leaves - and yes, crude but unmistakable nets and baskets. So the scorps were tool-makers; but even that did not prove intelligence. Some bird's nests were much more carefully fashioned than these rather clumsy artifacts, apparently constructed from stems and fronds of the omnipresent kelp.

I felt like a visitor from space, Loren thought, poised above a Stone Age village on Earth, just when Man was discovering agriculture. Could he - or it - have correctly assessed human intelligence from such a survey? Or would the verdict have been: pure instinctive behaviour?

The probe had now gone so far into the clearing that the surrounding forest was no longer visible, though the nearest trunks could not have been more than fifty metres away. It was then that some wit among the Northers uttered the name that was thereafter unavoidable, even in the scientific reports: 'Downtown Scorpville".

It seemed to be, for want of better terms, both a residential and a business area. An outcropping of rock, about five metres high, meandered across the opening, and its face was pierced by numerous dark holes just wide enough to admit a scorp. Although these little caves were irregularly spaced, they were of such uniform size that they could hardly be natural, and the whole effect was that of an apartment building designed by an eccentric architect.

Scorps were coming and going through the entrances - like office workers in one of the old cities before the age of telecommunications, Loren thought. Their activities seemed as meaningless to him as, probably, the commerce of humans would have been to them.

'Hello,' one of Calypso's other watchers called, 'What's that? Extreme right - can you move closer?'

The interruption from outside his sphere of consciousness was jolting; it dragged Loren momentarily from the seabed back to the world of the surface.

His panoramic view tilted abruptly with the probe's change of attitude. Now it was level again and drifting slowly towards an isolated pyramid of rock, which was about ten metres high -judging by the two scorps at its base - and pierced by a single cave entrance. Loren could see nothing unusual about it; then, slowly, he became aware of certain anomalies - jarring elements that did not quite fit into the now-familiar Scorpville scene.

All the other scorps had been busily scurrying about. These two were motionless except for the continual swinging of their heads, back and forth. And there was something else -

These scorps were big. It was hard to judge scale here, and not until several more of the animals had scurried past was Loren quite sure that this pair was almost fifty per cent larger than average.

'What are they doing?' somebody whispered.

'I'll tell you,' another voice answered. 'They're guards -sentries.'

Once stated, the conclusion was so obvious that no one doubted it.

'But what are they guarding?'

'The queen, if they have one? The First Bank of Scorpville?'

'How can we find out? The sled's much too big to go inside -even if they'd let us try.'

It was at this point that the discussion became academic. The robot probe had now drifted down to within less than ten metres of the pyramid's summit, and the operator gave a brief burst from one of the control jets to stop it descending farther.

The sound, or the vibration, must have alerted the sentries. Both of them reared up simultaneously, and Loren had a sudden nightmare vision of clustered eyes, waving palps, and giant claws. I'm glad I'm not really here, even though it seems like it, he told himself. And it's lucky they can't swim.

But if they could not swim, they could climb. With astonishing speed, the scorps scrambled up the side of the pyramid and within seconds were on its summit, only a few metres below the sled.

'Gotta get out of here before they jump,' the operator said. 'Those pinchers could snap our cable like a piece of cotton.'

He was too late. A scorp launched itself off the rock, and seconds later its claws grabbed one of the skis of the sled's undercarriage.

The operator's human reflexes were equally swift and in control of a superior technology. At the same instant, he went into full reverse and swung the robot arm downward to the attack. And what was perhaps more decisive, he switched on the floodlights.

The scorp must have been completely blinded. Its claws opened in an almost human gesture of astonishment, and it dropped back to the seabed before the robot's mechanical hand could engage it in combat.

For a fraction of a second, Loren was also blind, as his goggles blacked out. Then the camera's automatic circuits corrected for the increased light level, and he had one startlingly clear close-up of the baffled scorp just before it dropped out of the field of view.

Somehow he was not in the least surprised to see that it was wearing two bands of metal below its right claw.

He was reviewing this final scene as Calypso headed back for Tarna, and his senses were still so concentrated on the underwater world that he never felt the mild shockwave as it raced past the boat. But then he became aware of the shouts and confusion around him and felt the deck heel as Calypso suddenly changed course. He tore off the goggles and stood blinking in the brilliant sunlight.

For a moment he was totally blind; then, as his eyes adjusted to the glare, he saw that they were only a few hundred metres from South Island's palm-fringed coast. We've hit a reef, he thought. Brant will never hear the last of this...

And then he saw, climbing up over the eastern horizon, something he had never dreamed of witnessing on peaceful Thalassa. It was the mushroom cloud that had haunted men's nightmares for two thousand years.

What was Brant doing? Surely he should be heading for land; instead, he was swinging Calypso around in the tightest possible turning circle, heading out to sea. But he seemed to have taken charge, while everyone else on deck was staring slack-mouthed towards the east.

'Krakan!' one of the Norther scientists whispered, and for a moment Loren thought he was merely using the overworked Lassan expletive. Then he understood, and a vast feeling of relief swept over him. It was very short-lived.

'No,' Kumar said, looking more alarmed than Loren would have thought possible. 'Not Krakan - much closer. Child of Krakan.'

The boat radio was now emitting continuous beeps of alarm, interspersed with solemn warning messages. Loren had no time to absorb any of them when he saw that something very strange was happening to the horizon. It was not where it should have been.

This was all very confusing; half of his mind was still down there with the scorps, and even now he had to keep blinking against the glare from sea and sky. Perhaps there was something wrong with his vision. Although he was quite certain that Calypso was now on an even keel, his eyes told him that it was plunging steeply downward.

No; it was the sea that was rising, with a roar that now obliterated all other sounds. He dared not judge the height of the wave that was bearing down upon them; now he understood why Brant was heading out into deep water, away from the deadly shallows against which the tsunami was about to expend its fury.

A giant hand gripped Calypso and lifted her bow up, up towards the zenith. Loren started to slide helplessly along the deck; he tried to grasp a stanchion, missed it, then found himself in the water.

Remember your emergency training, he told himself fiercely. In sea or in space, the principle is always the same. The greatest danger is panic, so keep your head...

There was no risk of drowning; his life-jacket would see to that. But where was the inflation lever? His fingers scrabbled wildly around the webbing at his waist, and despite all his resolve, he felt a brief, icy chill before he found the metal bar. It moved easily, and to his great relief he felt the jacket expand around him, gripping him in a welcome embrace.

Now the only real danger would be from Calypso herself if she crashed back upon his head. Where was she?

Much too close for comfort, in this raging water, and with part of her deck-housing hanging into the sea. Incredibly, most of the crew still seemed on board. Now they were pointing at him, and someone was preparing to throw a life-belt.

The water was full of floating debris - chairs, boxes, pieces of equipment - and there went the sled, slowly sinking as it blew bubbles from a damaged buoyancy tank. I hope they can salvage it, Loren thought. If not, this will be a very expensive trip, and it may be a long time before we can study the scorps again. He felt rather proud of himself for so calm an appraisal of the situation, considering the circumstances.

Something brushed against his right leg; with an automatic reflex, he tried to kick it away. Though it bit uncomfortably into the flesh, he was more annoyed than alarmed. He was safely afloat, the giant wave had passed, and nothing could harm him now.

He kicked again, more cautiously. Even as he did so, he felt the same entanglement on the other leg. And now this was no longer a neutral caress; despite the buoyancy of his life-jacket, something was pulling him underwater.

That was when Loren Lorenson felt the first moment of real panic, for he suddenly remembered the questing tentacles of the great polyp. Yet those must be soft and fleshy - this was obviously some wire or cable. Of course - it was the umbilical cord from the sinking sled.

He might still have been able to disentangle himself had he not swallowed a mouthful of water from an unexpected wave. Choking and coughing, he tried to clear his lungs, kicking at the cable at the same time.

And then the vital boundary between air and water - between life and death - was less than a metre overhead; but there was no way that he could reach it.

At such a moment, a man thinks of nothing but his own survival. There were no flashbacks, no regrets for his past life - not even a fleeting glimpse of Mirissa.

When he realized it was all over, he felt no fear. His last conscious thought was pure anger that he had travelled fifty light-years, only to meet so trivial and unheroic an end.

So Loren Lorenson died for the second time, in the warm shallows of the Thalassan sea. He had not learned from experience; the first death had been much easier, two hundred years ago.

 

V

The Bounty Syndrome

 

31 Petition

Though Captain Sirdar Bey would have denied that he had a milligram of superstition in his body, he always started to worry when things went well. So far, Thalassa had been almost too good to be true; everything had gone according to the most optimistic plan. The shield was being constructed right on schedule, and there had been absolutely no problems worth talking about.

But now, all within the space of twenty-four hours ...