When it is over, Strongpincer finds himself missing a couple of legs and a feeler, but his opponent is dead. He feasts on the remains, then calls some others to share, and from then on Strongpincer is a power in the school.
That school is where he’s trying to go right now. He does not imagine finding his own schoolmasters there, but he figures it must be a good spot to look for children. If the old school is empty, he imagines his band camping while they catch some new recruits for the gang. And if there are schoolmasters there—Strongpincer is bigger and stronger than he remembers being when he left the place. He wouldn’t mind the chance to teach a schoolmaster some things.
A sound wakes Strongpincer from his memory. It is a faint, steady hum. It is difficult to tell which direction the sound is coming from. Strongpincer pings the others to quiet down, then swims in a wide circle, listening carefully. The sound seems to be strongest off to the left, which is very strange indeed. As far as Strongpincer knows, there’s nothing that way but an expanse of empty sea bottom.
So what is the hum? It isn’t any kind of animal—it’s too steady. He listens but it never changes pitch or volume. A vent, perhaps? Possibly a pipe farm? Water through pipes can make all kinds of noises. A vent out here would be isolated, vulnerable. Easy pickings? Or abandoned, free for the taking?
He turns toward the sound, but soon realizes his bearing is changing as he homes in. The noise is moving. It is also getting fainter even though he and the others are swimming hard.
Strongpincer pauses for thought. A moving sound means some kind of creature, and if it can swim faster than a strong adult like himself, it must be quite large. He is content to hunt smaller prey. The three bandits give up the chase and turn back toward the current. There are swimmers to catch there, and rocks coated with edible growths. And he imagines that when they find a school of youngsters they can eat any they don’t recruit.
The ride out from Hitode with the second Coquille was slow and unsteady. The Coquille tended to swing astern as the sub moved, which angled its flat shape downward, turning the whole thing into a giant sea anchor trying to drag the sub into the sea bottom. Josef had to pitch the sub’s nose up at about forty-five degrees and redline the motors to compensate for the drag. Changing directions meant coming to a halt, turning the sub with the thrusters, and starting off again.
The three of them had picked the ruins at the extinct Maury 19 vent as the best hiding place. Nobody back at Hitode knew where they were going, so there was no way the Sholen could learn their location without going out and searching. The Maury 19 site had lots of jumbled rock, including ancient Ilmataran cut building stones, which would hide the Coquille’s sonar signature.
Setting up the Coquille was even more difficult than moving it. As designed, it was supposed to simply hang from the submarine while a couple of divers released the catches at the side of the shipping shroud and then began inflating it with an APOS unit. The flexible-walled shelter would unfold, and presto! An underwater house!
It didn’t work that way. When Rob and Alicia released the catches and began inflation, the Coquille stayed sullenly inside the shipping shroud while precious argon bubbled uselessly into the ocean because the little pump in the APOS unit couldn’t generate enough pressure to blow up the big Kevlar-and-foam shelter unit.
So Alicia monitored the inflation level while Rob moved around the outside of the shelter, manually cranking the four support struts into their extended position. Since extending any one strut too far would jam the others, this meant Rob had to give each strut a couple of cranks with the extremely inadequate folding crank tool, swim to the next and repeat the process, over and over and over until the Coquille reached its full four-meter height. He could feel blisters developing on his hands, and every muscle in his upper body ached by the time the job was done.
Alicia spent the time fiddling with the inflation pump. Too much pressure and the gas backed up and bubbled away. Too little and the sides of the Coquille began to buckle inward. She lost several liters of argon before finding an inflation rate that matched Rob’s pace cranking open the struts.
After an hour of exhausting work the Coquille was inflated. Rob took a breather and let Alicia extend the support legs. Then Josef, who had spent the whole time aboard the sub keeping it in exactly the right position with the side thrusters, lowered the structure to the seafloor.
More work with the folding crank tool followed as Rob and Alicia got the legs adjusted to keep the shelter level. Then they could swim underneath to the access hatch and climb up into their new home.
Rob went first, out of some atavistic impulse to make sure it was all right before letting Alicia inside. He cracked the hatch and then opened it, looking around to make sure nothing had shifted and was about to fall on his head. The light control was just inside, and after working in the ocean darkness by shoulder lamps, the halogen bulbs were blinding.
The interior of the Coquille was all new and clean—shockingly so after his months living in Hitode’s high-tech squalor. All the equipment was still packed in a layer on the floor, neatly covered with shrink-wrap.
Rob cleared the hatch and winced a little as he slopped seawater onto the nice clean interior. Like getting the first scratch on a new toy. Alicia surged up next to him, squinting in the brightness.
“Atmosphere test,” he said, then switched off his APOS and cracked his helmet.
The smell nearly knocked him out. It was a powerful newcar smell of fresh plastic, a hint of ozone, and something unfamiliar that, after a moment, Rob realized was simply fresh, clean air. He’d been breathing his own and everyone else’s funk for so long the absence of any stench was shocking.
The two of them got to work unpacking. They peeled up the shrink-wrap layer and began stowing all the items where they belonged. Everything had a helpful little label telling where it should go. It was like a tremendous birthday present. There was a compact life-support unit with its own radiothermal generator, four hammocks to go in the upper section of the shelter, a little aluminum worktable, a stove, a dehumidifier/potable water extractor, a freezer for food and specimens, a medical kit—everything a small team would need for extended field operations.
The interior was a single space. They stacked the equipment against the walls and unfolded a table in the center. The hatch in the floor was off center, so that a fourth person could sit at the table as long as nobody needed to go in or out. The hammocks hung overhead, just above an average astronaut’s head—which meant that Josef had to stoop.
The Coquilles had been designed to serve as temporary bases for exploration beyond the immediate surroundings of Hitode. The mission planners had imagined that archaeologists might set one up at a particularly good site for intensive digging, or biologists establish themselves at a rich vent to study the native life. Thanks to Sholen (and some Terran) concerns about “colonization” the Coqs had never been used.
“What do you think?” Josef poked his head into the hatch and called out, making them jump in surprise.
“It’s great! Sen couldn’t pay me to leave!” said Rob. “It’s going to be a little cramped with three of us, but not too bad. I don’t snore.”